SABC 1: DA campaign Billboard

ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION
Name of the monitor: Sakhile Dube
Name of Television station: SABC 1
Name of programme: News
Date of broadcast: 22/01/2019
Story number in the bulletin 4
Time: 19:00 – 19:30
Genre: News
Theme: Political Campaign
Skills: Sources
GBV focus explicit or implicit? Explicit
Gem Classification: Gender Blind
Provide a link: Video Footage on Dropbox

A brief description of the news story:

The Democratic Alliance released a campaign billboard with the names of people who died during the Life Esidimeni care, the children who fell in the pit latrines and those who died in the Marikana massacre. The billboard elicited criticism from ordinary citizens and political analysts and the DA leader Mmusi Maimane refused to comment on the matter.

Analysis

This story can be considered gender aware as it includes multiple female sources from the public who commented on the issue. The reporter who covered the story was a woman, which is important to note as most political stories are dominated by men. However the clip is still gender blind in how it handles voices of authority. The SABC could have made this clip more gender aware by including female sources in positions of authority to comment on the insensitivity of the billboards. It is not enough to only include members of the public as the only female voices in the story. Television stations should go out of their way to find female political analysts to comment on issues that have previously been dominated by male sources.

Conclusion

Although the story can be considered gender aware in its selection of reporters and sources who are members of the public, as previously stated, they missed an opportunity to find female sources of authority. The SABC also failed to include the voices of the victims’ families on how they felt about such kind of lobbying for campaigns as they are directly affected by the issue.