Rear-view mirror lessons: SA media, coverage on foreign nationals

Though indications are that the Daily Sun was the main contributor to negative perceptions of foreigners, other media have also played an important role in reinforcing negative stereotypes of African immigrants.

Analysing the period January 2007 to April 2008, Media Tenor South Africa attempted to establish how reporting patterns in SA media may have contributed to negative perceptions of non-Western nationals in SA. From the outset, it must be stated that the research did not set out to determine a direct link between media coverage and public violence, or that media have contributed directly or indirectly to the recent xenophobic attacks themselves.

Monthly coverage of issues attached to foreigners

Examining the month-by-month coverage in which foreigners were the main protagonists of reports, the persistent negative coverage they received was the most striking feature of the coverage.

Says Wadim Schreiner, MD of Media Tenor South Africa, “This continuous coverage could have played a powerful role in first evoking negative perceptions then reinforcing them over time.”

When one examines the nature of reporting, ie whether reports focused on the negative contexts of protagonists or whether journalists injected their own biases into the story (defined here as the slanting of reports), unusually high levels of negativity occasionally appeared.

“It is particularly interesting that this bias had little to do with coverage of foreign nationals as victims,” says Wadim Schreiner. “Instead, 67% of the bias against foreign nationals sprung from crime-related coverage. Our analysis further suggests that less than a quarter of reports on foreign nationals explicitly identified them as positive protagonists, like professionals, sportspersons, tourists and investors.”

Negative bias in reporting on foreign nationals

Comparing the combined impact that bias (slanting) and volumes could potentially have on the public domain, the Daily Sun emerged as the medium most likely to identify protagonists as foreign nationals and also report on them in a biased way.

Comments Schreiner, “It is particularly commendable to see that broadcast news bulletins have perhaps set a standard for reporting on foreign nationals. The SABC's English and Zulu/Xhosa News, along with e.tv, were media amongst those who most often reported on foreign nationals, but their content appears to have been the most balanced.”

“Taking into account, then, that foreign nationals are most often associated with crime, and that their positive contributions to South African society is under-reported, a strong case emerges for either increasing the positive stories linked to foreign nationals, or not alluding to them as foreigners at all,” says Schreiner. “Biases in this direction have the potential to polarise public perceptions in a way that becomes unpredictable.”

For more details on the results of the analysis, go to www.mediatenor.co.za.

Note: For this research, 1085 reports in 26 media (six dailies, 10 news broadcasts, five weeklies and five financial media) were analysed. The research compared which issues are most often associated with individual foreigners. Both residents in South Africa and visitors to the country were analysed.