The media's open secret: planning for Mandela's passing

Front page of Cape Argus: 27 January 2011.

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No joy out of it either

Well, I can tell you that the journalists at Milpark and then later at Mandela's Houghton home got no joy out of it either. At the back of most of their minds they knew that it was distasteful situation - that they seemed like vultures waiting for the great man to die. But in the absence of authoritative information - and even deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe admitted on Friday, 28 January 2011, that communications on Mandela's hospitalisation could have been better - this sort of thing tends to happen.

If you can't get information out of an official channel, you have to get it elsewhere. And there's no doubt that the nation was on tenterhooks last week waiting for information on Mandela's health. Reporting, as they say, a dirty job - especially when the pushy foreign hacks from the big TV networks such as CNN descend on your patch.

If you read The Sunday Independent or the Sunday Times this past weekend, you will know that the information vacuum may have been a product of an apparent turf war between the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Government over whom was to be the official communicator. The foundation has since denied this.

We now know from Motlanthe's Friday press conference that the military is responsible for Mandela's health but that the government will do the communications. It would seem that Motlanthe or the presidency will make all the announcements in future, though I'm sure it is the Government Communication and Information System department - or GCIS as it is more commonly known - doing the co-ordinating behind the scenes.

Top-secret meeting

This is very interesting as Bizcommunity.com has learned that, after a round of Mandela-death rumours last year, the government held a top-secret meeting with the heads of the major broadcasters and newspapers to spell out the funeral plans, media accreditation and communications protocols for when Mandela dies. We understand that it was said at the meeting that it was indeed the government - and neither the foundation nor the Mandela family - that would do the communications and co-ordination, so why things then went so wrong last week boggles the mind.

I'm guessing it was because the government's plans were not communicated last year to the foundation or the Mandela family.

If it sounds ghoulish that the government has already laid out the plans for the great man's burial, then you are a being a tad naive. And all South African newspapers and broadcasters worth their salt have planned for Mandela's passing, pre-preparing the obituaries, supplements and inserts to celebrate his life and coming up with battle plans to cover the event. Everyone also has Mandela mini websites done and dusted that can be launched at the push of a button. (And if they didn't by last week, they're scrambling to put them together now!)

While I was at the East London-based Daily Dispatch newspaper, the Mandela supplement was proofed and ready to go a couple of years back.

Prepare ahead of time

This is an open secret in media circles and it's not just the SA media which have nailed down the details. The big foreign broadcasters and newspapers prepare obituaries ahead of time for important elderly people as a matter of course - the reason being that you can't do a well-researched tribute properly on the fly - and their Mandela plans will have been sorted out in the past year as the death hoaxes have become more frequent.

For the newspapers , Mandela's passing will be more about marking the historic event rather than increased readership because - as we saw with the 2010 FIFA World Cup - it will belong to the rolling coverage that only TV, radio and the web can provide. For the big international networks such as CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera, it will be a big story that will bring big audience numbers. Mandela is a world icon standing for self-sacrifice, peace and tolerance such as we have not had since Mahatma Gandhi and, when he dies, the world's eyes will turn to SA.

SA's editors and TV- and radio-station managers will be worried about covering the story amid the circus that the foreign-press corps will bring. It is a particularly interesting challenge for a little paper such as the Daily Dispatch because it circulates throughout the Transkei, where Mandela's home, Qunu, is situated.

It is highly likely that Mandela will be buried in Qunu after a state funeral in the executive and de facto national capital city, Pretoria - or vice versa - and the Qunu leg is going to be difficult for all. It is a typical Transkei village scattered far and wide over the rolling hills - what we Eastern Capers call "the lullies". Nearby Mthatha only has two hotels and a handful of guest houses and then there's the crumbling infrastructure - potholed streets, regular electricity blackouts, violent crime - so it will mean satellite phones and 4x4s for the journalists.

Uniquely placed

On the face of it, the Dispatch is uniquely placed to cover the event because it has a two-man bureau in Mthatha but it also cannot afford to get locked out of the story because of the overwhelming surge of international press.

I recall that the Dispatch was even investigating how to lock down its tiny Mthatha office as it cannot afford to be invaded by outside media people looking for a reliable Internet connection. There was talk in the newsroom that many Qunu villagers had already been paid by foreign journalists for accommodation in their homes but I would imagine this is misguided as the security will be so tight that I don't think anyone will get near Qunu without accreditation.

Last week, with so little information to go on, the SA media played it straight down the line. There was genuine concern, little sensationalism and many confessed to their audiences that they themselves were in the dark. There was one odd spot, when the Daily Voice tabloid in Cape Town did a tribute to Mandela's life on Friday - more the sort of thing you would do after than prior to his death.

By Sunday, however, there was only one story left to tell - how the PR bungle came about - which The Sunday Independent put on its front page and the Sunday Times on page three.

Rather than acting improperly, I think the SA media generally did the best it could in a bad situation last week. In fact, as a dress rehearsal for the real thing, we did rather admirably.

For more:

• Mail & Guardian: The national waiting room by editor Nic Dawes
  
• Times Live: First lesson: don't lie to us by Justice Malala at The Times
  
• Daily Maverick: Righteous indignation: the mishandling of Nelson Mandela's illness by deputy editor Phillip de Wet
  
• Bizcommunity Search: Mandela