4. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - Faculties submissions

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    Newsroom Culture and Journalistic Practice at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC): An Ethnographic study
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Dlamini, Tula; Chiumbu, Sarah
    This research sets out to examine newsroom culture and journalism practice at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). The primary objective is to understand the factors inside the SABC newsroom that impact the construction of news stories and current affairs productions. Anchored on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of the habitus, doxa, and capital, together with Habermas’ concept of the Public Sphere, this thesis describes the newsroom culture of the SABC between 2016 and 2021 based on everyday work experiences and perspectives of news workers, managers at the broadcaster and available documents. As a secondary objective, the study explores how SABC newscasts and current affairs programming mediate news. Specifically, the content analysis of News and Current Affairs products assesses how the SABC mediated pluralist politics during the 2016 local government elections from the perspective of normative public sphere principles and examines how routines, practices, and professional values broadly impacted the broadcaster’s coverage, particularly the contested issue of ‘land’. The study is essentially a qualitative ethnography of the SABC newsrooms, although a multi-method approach is adopted to arrive at a more encompassing view of the journalistic culture of News and Current Affairs construction at the broadcaster. The 2016 period and after are interesting because these are also moments in time when the SABC newsroom was characterised by widely reported tension and editorial turmoil. The findings reveal some of the embedded structural systems in the SABC’s newsrooms, such as the role of the management hierarchy and the institutional norms, shared professional values, and routines that journalists use to achieve functional ends for the broadcaster. Furthermore, the study identifies a gap in the general scholarship of the SABC. For example, fewer studies have attempted to account for the culture and journalistic practice inside SABC newsrooms, all of which have impacted directly on the general operations of the broadcaster and execution of its PSB mandate.
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    Analyzing Financial Survival Strategies for Public Service Broadcasters in Disruptive Environments: A Case Study of SABC and Alternative Funding Models
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mnguni, Thamba Isaack; Koba, Yolo
    Following the upsurge in globalization, digitization, and audience fragmentation, public service broadcasting and its legitimacy are often questioned, if not undermined. This study explores the financial survival of public service broadcasters in the digital era. The lack of funding for public broadcasters has a bearing impact, affecting the delivery of public mandate, diversity of content, cultural diversity, inadequate production of television content, and editorial independence due to the lack of funds. In production, producers often need reduced production budgets, thus limiting the quality of the media output and the representation of audiences. Using a qualitative approach, in-depth interviews, and the case of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), this study argues that traditional public broadcasters need to modernize their business operations and adopt technology and innovation to survive against competition while retaining the public service mandate as its Unique Selling Point (USP). This paper also highlights internal and external organizational impediments that have thus far hindered the successful financial operation of the SABC. This, therefore, leads to questions about the legitimacy and democratic role of public broadcasters. In response to the financial challenges exerted by poor funding from the government, poor commercial revenues, and TV license evasion, this study argues that public broadcasters can deploy multiple alternative revenue streams to harness revenues to make up for the shortfalls with traditional revenues. As a result, this study recommends four funding models for the SABC to harness alternative revenues: Services and Commercial model, Endowment Funding and Licensing and Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiatives and the Hybrid model. This study also reveals that the legitimacy of the SABC as a public broadcaster is hanging on a shoestring until the matter of Analogue Switch Off (ASO), Set Top Boxes (STBs), and Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) are successfully resolved by the government.
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    In the crosshairs of ANC factional battles A historical study of the transformation of the SABC from a public broadcaster to an ANC party broadcaster (2008 – 2018)
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mda, Lizeka Noxolo; Steenveld, Lynette
    This research set out to investigate the way in which the African National Congress’s political authority influenced changes in the South African Broadcasting Corporation through its webs of power and influence, exercised not only in relation to the Board and various line authorities, but in subtle forms of power exercised through the influence of the ANC’s culture of ‘discipline’, loyalty, and non-critical engagement with authority. Focusing on the years of the Jacob Zuma presidency – 2008 to 2018 – the research explores how the organisational cultures of both the ANC, as an organisation and the leading party in government, and the SABC, enabled the ANC to undermine the SABC’s mandate as a public broadcaster. Both the ANC government’s policies and practices regarding broadcasting and media freedom, and board selection, and the party’s less formal practices, such as cadre deployment, are probed and analysed to understand how the factional battles within the ANC undermined the public broadcaster. A qualitative approach using archival material and in-depth interviews is adopted.
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    An analysis of the main barriers to effective corporate governance at the SABC
    (University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Loliwe, Wendy
    South Africa is a highly structured country with numerous rules, practices and regulations. These laws are imperative in the successful running of companies including State-owned Companies (SOCs). The SOCs including the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) are governed by corporate governance framework which define the principles of fairness, accountability, responsibility and transparency – where role players are identified, those responsible for the corporate governance and to whom they are accountable. South Africa further considers its best corporate governance practises through implementation of various versions of the King Reports of Good Corporate Governance which have their foundations in effective and ethical leadership. In some instances, SOCs can be forced into complying with those laws which can lead to poor corporate governance and dysfunctionality of a company. In the case of the SABC, there were numerous allegations of maladministration, financial mismanagement, unethical conduct, abuse of power, political interference and governance challenges. The study is therefore concerned with the effective corporate governance at the SABC. It examines the main barriers to effective corporate governance rules and practices within the SABC or, put differently, why good corporate governance has eluded the SABC. The study applied the qualitative approach. The primary data was collected though semi-structured interviews - from former and current members of the boards of directors, government as a shareholder, former and current officials, representatives of the regulator and other experts in public broadcasting. The secondary data has been examined from various archival resources such as SABC Annual Financial Statements and Reports and policies which are useful for triangulation. It was found that the main barriers identified include political parties interference, lack of board commitment to fulfill its oversight role, abuse of shareholder’s power, no consequence management in transgression and performance monitoring systems, iii lack of adherence to the regulatory framework, appointments of unqualified and unskilled board member, lack of transparency and disclosure, and SABC funding. Based on the findings, it was concluded that The SABC has enough applicable legislation and internal policies to protect itself from abuse by the shareholder and ensure good corporate governance but effective enforcement of existing laws and regulations constitutes a major challenge for the development and implementation of corporate governance.