Media Bored With Apartheid

Boredom with the issue of apartheid, not government censorship, has caused a decrease in U.S. coverage of South Africa, a South African journalist concluded at a Kennedy School of Government forum last night.

"Censorship was an excuse for no longer covering the story," said Philip Van Niekerk, a Cape Town writer and a panelist at yesterday's forum on "Press Coverage of South Africa." He said that instead, one factor contributing to the decline in coverage was loss of interest in the country.

Another reason South Africa has not been covered heavily in the last few years may be a scarcity of Black reporters and correspondents, said Danny Schechter, the producer of the PBS weekly show South Africa Now.

But former NBC News president Larry Grossman--a visiting lecturer at the Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public policy--said a government clamp down on visas had also kept South Africa out of the news in the U.S. He added that he thought recent action in the African nation was "no longer newsworthy."

Psychological Blow

Van Niekerk said before the Botha government imposed a ban on press coverage, American press coverage of the violence there dealt a psychological blow to South Africans who support apartheid.

According to Grossman, in the mid-1980s, violence in South Africa "became such a gripping story" because it reminded American audiences of the recent Civil Rights fights.

But Van Niekerk said that sort of coverage was not without its problems. "The problem with media in this country is that they cover stories like a soap opera."

In spite of the drop in coverage, Van Niekerk said he thought Americans still oppose the South African government. "The domestic opinion is pretty hostile towards [them]," he said.

When asked by a member of the audience why South African suppression was covered more than oppression in other places, such as Israel, Grossman said he attributed the diference to the fact that South Africans speak English, that they used to be part of the British Commonwealth and that their situation echos the Civil Rights movement.

Knute Knudson Jr., a student at the Kennedy School, said he found the discussion to be the "first time some of the information that I received had some neutral quality to it untainted by South African sources."