New Age2.png White capital turns fear of Guptas into battle to shape SA’s economy Pinky Khoabane, The New Age, Johannesburg, 15 March 2016 Comments by BDFM’s editor-inchief, Peter Bruce, that journalist Alec Hogg would have no difficulty raising funds for a defamation lawsuit by the Gupta family confirms the extent to which corporate media is embedded in the powerful networks of business and finance. The latest spat between South Africa’s media and the Guptas stems from a story first published in the Financial Times of London that the Guptas invited Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas to a meeting at which they offered him the job of finance minister to succeed Nhlanhla Nene. The Guptas have denied the story, going so far as to show Atul Gupta’s passport entry as proof that he was not in the country and couldn’t have been at such a meeting – evidence which has done nothing to stem the tide of accusations. In contrast, the allegations against the Guptas come with no evidence. The narrative is out, you see, and the media bully boys must stick to it and make it stick in the minds of the citizenry. The neatly constructed narrative that the Guptas are literally running the state has been persistent; covered in a series of stories by Bloomberg, BizNews, Hogg’s online publication, and other newspapers. It culminated last week in what the Financial Times of London called “state capture”. The Guptas in turn, sent Hogg a legal letter. It is in response to this letter that Bruce wrote in his column, published in the Financial Mail’s online edition, that: “Firstly, Hogg is no pushover and he will not have much difficulty raising funds in the business community to fight a defamation suit.” He has since backtracked, however, claiming that his comments were purely speculative: “I know absolutely nothing about Alec Hogg’s finances or his business. My comment about him effectively ‘crowd-funding’ funds to fight a potentially expensive legal battle was purely speculative,” The New Age reported. But it is too little too late. Media institutions are owned by big corporations and rely on advertisers for their income. They therefore publish to protect the interests of these two groups and their owners, albeit that they are a miniscule percentage compared to the rest of their stakeholders. Sections of the SA media protect white capital. The Nkandla scandal should never be defended but the construction industry’s price fixing scandal in the 2010 Fifa World Cup stadia runs into billions of rands and pales in comparison and yet the column space dedicated to the latter is proportionally less despite the massive theft. In protecting their turf, media employ a combination of tactics, including straightforward propaganda and scare mongering. The narrative that we should be afraid of the Gupta family, which owns The New Age and ANN7, and the Sekunjalo consortium, led by Iqbal Survé, which bought the Independent Group, has taken various turns, culminating in the latest concept of “state capture” about the Guptas and questions on whether Survé is servicing the loan from the Public Investment Corporation. For the first time, we have blacks with the financial muscle to challenge and break the media conglomerate in this country and the white-male club of this industry will not take it lying down. Such is the desperation to protect white capital that the battle started five years ago when news broke that new black owners were entering the media industry is taking a dangerous turn which is becoming a battle to shape SA’s economy. From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/DRIVE/main%20edition/15032016/epaperpdf/4.pdf -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
