English media ‘lazier' than Afrikaans – research

What's more, he says, the Afrikaans media are more willing and adept at driving major issues that affect their readers, instead of resorting to what he calls “the complacent, lazy, event-based reportage” that is often displayed by the English media.

“Our ongoing research shows that Afrikaans media continues to use far more of its own writing than the English media,” says Schreiner.

“There is no doubt that the paucity of Afrikaans news from agencies is a strong motivation for these media to generate their own content. But they are also far more sensitive to their audience's unique concerns, and as a result generate focused content that talks directly to their readership, rather than reflecting what the editors loftily think the people should be reading.”

Exposed to fewer

Schreiner says that the strong reliance on agency copy by the English media, as well as a growing trend by media houses to syndicate the same material within their various publications, meant that South African readers were being exposed to fewer and fewer different voices and opinions.

This has worrying implications for long-term trust in the media, as well as raising questions around the English media's continued ability to contribute to a healthy democracy in South Africa.

“With one or two notable exceptions, what we are seeing in our research is a steady slide into vanilla reporting by the bulk of the English media,” comments Schreiner. “They are tending to report according to their own agendas, and those of their owners, rather than displaying the important ability to look at an issue from more than one angle, and to unpack those issues meaningfully for their readers.

“Speaking broadly, they are increasingly blurring the lines between PR, advertising and editorial, and this is making it difficult for readers to base any meaningful decisions on what they read in the English media. This is why, in my experience, more English speakers are starting to read Afrikaans media.”

Not at all surprising

It is for this reason that the Afrikaans media's dominant showing in South Africa's annual Innovation Scorecard was not at all surprising, continues Schreiner. In the Scorecard, which was released recently, Afrikaans financial daily Sake24 emerged as the media that reported best on innovation, well ahead of The Star and FinWeek. Sake Rapport was another publication to feature strongly.

The Innovation Scorecard is a quantitative assessment of corporate coverage on innovation in the country's leading media. It highlights listed and non-listed companies that include this critical aspect of business as a key priority in their communication strategies. The results of the scorecard are based on the volume of coverage that the top 100 companies received.

This year the scorecard also included South Africa's first survey on innovation reporting in the media – an area that Schreiner says is still largely undeveloped and misunderstood field. He estimates that less than one percent of the total press coverage of companies every year deals with innovation.

Mandy de Waal, co-founder of Innovation Scorecard partner innovationTOWN, says that the findings of the scorecard suggested that innovation might just be one of the niche topics Afrikaans media has selected for their readers' benefit.

“The loyalty that Afrikaans readers exhibit to their language, as represented by numerous organisations like the ATKV, may ensure these media a continuing constant base of readers, which in turn ensures them a ‘guaranteed' readership for innovative content,” comments De Waal.