South Africa kicks out at media's World Cup critics
With the fast approaching World Cup, there have been several issues which require immediate attention on them, one of which is the reactions of the foreign media towards the event being hosted in South Africa. Some press coverage has been deemed too harsh by the host nation, but is this really justified. When FIFA’s Secretary General was asked at the turn of the year why the number of overseas visitors planning to travel to South Africa for the World Cup was down on expectations, he said it was due to the ‘really bad and sad’ reporting in Europe, and in particular Germany and England, which, he said, was skewing perceptions of South Africa and harming ticket sales.
And that was before a Daily Star front page warned that England fans may be ‘caught up in a machete race war’ in a ‘crime ravaged’ country. That left UK journalists based in South Africa desperately trying to explain to colleagues that the Star's editorial line was not representative of the British press as a whole.
It is beyond question that there are a string of issues surrounding the South African World Cup that are open to legitimate probing. Some are the same ones as those faced by any country hosting a major tournament. Will the venues be ready? What is the level of the security threat? Will visitors be overcharged for tickets and hotel rooms? But, given that this is the first African World Cup and is taking place in a country with a particular history, there are also additional questions. Would the money lavished on new stadiums be better spent on other priorities? Or had winning the right to host a World Cup prompted a leap forward in terms of investment in infrastructure, transport and tourism that simply wouldn't have happened without it?
But over two years there has been a growing sense in South Africa that some of the reporting from British newspapers in particular has been overly negative and, for some, retained an undercurrent of post-colonial superiority that if followed to its logical conclusion would ensure that no World Cup or Olympic Games ever took place outside the US and Europe.
The criticism has been further complicated by the fact that many South African newspapers syndicate a sizeable amount of content from UK newspapers and several are modeled on their British counterparts. The web has also been a factor, meaning that over the top, conjecture is given the same weight as finely argued investigation and ensuring that all articles in all papers are available internationally within moments of being published. Particularly controversial examples are linked to, copied, pasted and passed around while more measured arguments are passed over.
It is not as though the same South African media that have rallied against the foreign press have been slow to question the tournament. In particular, there have been searching questions being asked of FFIFA, with one newspaper winning a lengthy court battle to be able to reveal the details of the contract between the governing body and the host nation.
Hard on the heels of Canadian outrage at reporting of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, when a pile-up of problems at the start of the games provoked a major row between the International Olympic Committee and sections of the British press, there is a pattern emerging. Several Canadian papers, and many South African ones, have looked to the London Olympics as an opportunity for revenge. But they may be disregarding the fact that the British press is likely to be as critical of an event in its own backyard. Analysis by the media monitoring group Media Tenor suggests that the way in which the World Cup build-up has been reported is not unusual. Analyzing 66,446 stories in 195 titles from 37 countries, it showed that the concerns may have been different but that Germany also received a rough ride in the run-up to its tournament.
It is possible that South Africa has underestimated the extent to which major sporting events are scrutinized during preparation but tend to enjoy an altogether different appraisal in hindsight. Why can’t the predictions of the media simply revolve around the fact that the World Cup will be neither miracle-cure nor disaster, just a marvelous sporting spectacle in an extraordinarily beautiful and hospitable country, enviously watched on television by half the globe.
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