Sex sells, but does the public really buy that?

Several incidents in recent months have put the issue of the limits to freedom of expression under the spotlight. The phone hacking scandal in Britain showed that some media houses are ready to scrape the bottom of the barrel when it comes to getting information. What is the motivation: critical information of public interest, or greed and cheap sensation?

On the first day of Women’s Month in South Africa in August, Eric Miyeni’s racial remarks on Ferial Haffejee sparked off a debate on media freedom in society

The much publicised sex tape scandal followed. On 15 August, the Sowetan, a daily newspaper in South Africa, carried a lead story on a video that captured a sexual encounter between two on-duty law enforcement officers, in uniform. The paper argued: “they are having sex, on duty, in police uniform, in a government hospital, during working hours – all of which belong to the citizens of this [South Africa] country.”

Much of the debate surrounded the pictures that accompanied the story: the woman with her pants down, the man assumedly touching her private parts, their faces barely protected. Was that really in the name of public interest? Or were these highly inappropriate images for a daily newspaper open to all audiences and ages, without any special licence to publish such material! Did media freedom just cross the line between imparting knowledge to citizens and crude profit making?

The Gender and Media Audience research (GMAS)   showed that most women and men either feel uncomfortable or insulted when they see sexual images in the news. Yet the Sowetan ran out of copies on Monday 15th August! So maybe the paper is not entirely at fault here because we, as consumers, ate up the dog food handed out. The Sowetan subscribes to the South African Press Code that prescribes that “a visual presentation of sexual conduct may not be published, unless a legitimate public interest dictates otherwise”. I wonder if audience research findings are considered indicators of legitimate public interest. In any case, the 1996 Film and Publications Act states that sexual conduct includes “the lewd display of sexual intercourse, including the fondling or touching with any object, of genitals”. Based on the explicit nature of the published images, Sowetan is in clear violation of the Press Code and the Film and Publications Act. What the Sowetan did was completely unethical, unlawful and unjustifiable.

With this in mind, the Sowetan should have practiced critical, objective, sensitive, and informative reporting; with full consideration of professional media ethics, the Press Code and the Publications Act. Instead, what was produced was nothing more than a voyeuristic, sensationally titillating account supported by an underwhelming apology and justification. At the end of the day there are unsupported claims that sex sells and that is why copies of the Sowetan were sold out by midday.

However, I feel that we deserve better from our media.

Whilst it is important for the newspapers to publicise information that promotes public debate, for instance the conduct of law enforcers in South Africa, the way that information is put out there is very important. Otherwise we are bound to divert the attention of the public from the actual issue and rather focus on how the issue was put out into the public for comment..