SUNA VENTER
NEELS BLOM: Be very afraid now: journalists can bring about regime change
"Society’s need to seek the truth is greater than its fear of the truth"
It could have been a good day for South African journalism when Tiso Blackstar editor-at-large Peter Bruce and his family suffered an attack straight from the Gupta gutter and Business Day editor Tim Cohen was assaulted by a proxy of that same sewer. It could have been a good day for us hacks. Righteous indignation rose in our collective gullet, the bile never sweeter on our lips. Here was correlation between an attack by a race-addled entity and the Gupta-driven attempt to capture the South African state. Better yet, here was proof that journalism works as a defence of freedom and democracy; it got to the Guptas and their supplicants. Consider, though, that journalists have no rights greater than those of any other citizen, as described in the Constitution. It means, celebrated as many journalists are, they neither demand nor deserve special treatment.It means also that they are entitled to the state’s protective embrace in equal measure to that with which the state is obliged to p...
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