Radio Production

Introduction for News

In the second term, Frequency News came into full operation. The agency was split in two and I became a proud member of the G-News podcast team. The team was dynamic, innovative and committed to news that was accurate in its reporting, fair, based on in depth research, sensitivity and professionalism. We all took the responsibility to ensure that the individual news stories that we produced followed the agencies code of conduct. Of greater importance to me was that my individual stories complied with my personal journalistic philosophy.

The G-News team shared the responsibility of delivering the latest news in a weekly podcast. Around the time of our first broadcast, Julius Malema’s incident with the BBC reporter Johan Fisher was hot in the headlines. I took the story on, applying it to a local context and how it affected the youth league in Grahamstown. As the ANC’s youth league president it is assumed that the Malema’s views are representative of the parties’ members. I wanted to find out if the Grahamstown youth league members agreed with Malema’s racist attack at journalist Fisher at the recent press conference.

I had a good idea in the conceptualising the story. It was current, relevant and of significant importance to my community. However, looking back I believe I could have done the story a greater justice. For starters I could have reached out to a wider youthful audience, especially ones that were not members of Rhodes University. It was stipulated very early on in the course that students could not be used as valid interviewees unless one could pitch a very impressive story that includes them. I now know that there are plenty of ANCYL members and had I applied greater effort to finding them, my story would have been more credible. Furthermore, if I had managed my time more effectively I could have possibly come up with a more creative way of delivering the story. After being broadcasted I realised that there is an opportunity to develop this story and make it more accurate and representative of youth league members. A possible follow up to the story that I may propose to my editor is that of exploring the tensions if any that exists in the ANC youth league and if the party members on a national scale are happy with their current president. This is not a farfetched story especially given the removal of our state president, Thabo Mbeki, from office because of the public’s discontent with him as party leader.

The second story that I produced for G-News podcast was about the launching of a potentially controversial telephone directory called the Black Pages. This directory is set to only feature business that are 100% black owned. In producing this story, I managed to overcome some of the shortfalls from my first podcast feature. One of our agency’s aims is to give national news a local spin. Although this was also met in the Malema story, the attempt was half-hearted, since I did not actually talk to locals but students. The piece lost credibility and could not be regarded as accurate. This time around however I had a better connection to Agency aims and my personal philosophy. I found interesting sources who added value to the black pages story.

Though it would have been nice to hear from one 100% black owned business in Grahamstown, time constraints and a lack of resources prevented me from finding such a business. But this could be a potential area on which to develop the original story. I would suggest a follow up to my editor, taking the spin of evaluating to what extent the black pages have changed the business environment of one or two 100% black owned businesses in Grahamstown? Were any employment opportunities created? And what are the projections for future business activities and development in Grahamstown. 

Introduction for Climate Change 

In an attempt to raise awareness about the severity of climate change and the effects of global warming, Algoa Fm gave the JMS3 2010 radio class the opportunity to produce stories around this topic. It was both an exciting and challenging task. Exciting because it was an opportunity for me to learn something new as climate change is an area that I know very little about. It was my lack of knowledge in this area that made this task simultaneously challenging as it would require me to undergo much thorough research in the area. Commitment to thorough research is an important value in my journalistic philosophy therefore it was without question that I did just that. The research process involved me spending a lot of time on various internet sites searching for information about climate change. It also involved me talking to experts in this field such Professor Rob O'Donoghue of the Rhodes University Environmental department. 

The initial steps of my research led me to my specific area of focus around climate change, that of COP 17, formerly called Conference of the Parties. COP is an international climate change convention that takes place on an annual basis. Next step was to ensure that I maintained my other journalism ideals. I spoke to various sources to ensure a story that was representative of many views. These included Sheona Shackleton, a senior lecturer at the Environmental Science department ,who shared her experience from the COP15 conference that she attended in Copenhagen; Dylan McGarry PHD researcher at the Environmental Education Sustainability unit at Rhodes University; Letica Greyling, an Environmental and Sustainability lecturer at the Rhodes University Investec Business School  and  the  Leonie Joubert, a freelance science writer with a special interest in climate change and biodiversity.

Including a diverse range of sources helped me ensure that I adhered to standards of professionalism, accuracy and fairness. In this sense, I was successful in applying my journalistic approach to the way that I conceptualised the story about COP 17. But that is as far as my success went. I experienced some limitations throughout the production of this story namely, the constraints in following my own approach based on my understanding of Algoa FMs journalistic style and audience’s expectations.

Firstly we were told not to report negatively on the topic of climate change as Algoa FM wanted to break the stereotype associated with climate change being a purely destructive phenomenon. My story was thus framed from the onset to be upbeat and positive.  Fortunately I was able to capitalise on this. South Africa is next in line to host the COP convention and this is expected to have affect our economy positively. Furthermore, hosting an international convention of this magnitude is expected to add on to the attention and positive vibes left behind by the recent 2010 Fifa World Cup that South Africa also hosted. Still, having a pre-defined angle on which to frame my story left me feeling restricted in terms of where I could take the story.

Another limiting factor about Algoa FM’s journalistic style was that our stories were only allowed to feature the opinion of ‘experts’. This means that my story was quite limited in terms of representation of the community. Ordinary voices had to be deliberately excluded which affirms the notion in my journalistic philosophy that objectivity is non-existent. One can hardly call the intentional exclusion of particular voices over the inclusion of others as a practice of neutrality or impartiality. 

Algoa FM have their target audience who are used to hearing content in a particular form. I am sure it was for this reason that we were so restricted in terms of how creative we could be on the climate change package. It is sad that this had to be the case though.