Picking International News

The selection of international news for the bulletins of SAfm is influenced by more complex factors than could be seen from the narrow prism of an empirical journalistic paradigm en vogue. There has been a revolution from a propagandist approach during Apartheid to a professional approach following its demise but how professionally scientific is the selection process in the new South Africa? The author’s findings show that the delimiting well-tested routine of newsmaking act as powerful surrogates for individuals’ selection decisions of international news broadcast on SAfm’s bulletins. However, these routines are adapted to meet the organisational demands of the SABC, which, as a Public Service Broadcaster, has embraced the ideological discourse of South African/African nationalism, as well as some degree of neoliberalism as major philosophies underpinning its coverage of the world. This is however done with a conscious oppositional effort to modify or dwarf stories that explicitly promote American imperialism.