For the relaunch of SABC2's brand-new on-air imaging and its new channel identity SABC2 handed out impressive goodie bags on Thursday night to journalists and entertainment reporters with a press pack containing a hard copy press release, a 4GB USB (containing programming images, the release, channel logo images and programme logos) and a Sansui MP3 & Video Player with FM radio and earphones, as well as a separate set of Sansui headphones.
I didn't attend Thursday evening's launch of SABC2's new channel identity unveiling (I was invited but I had to decline due to multiple end-of-the month deadlines for various publications I do stuff for, co-inciding with daily and weekly deadlines for various publications, plus lecturing, once-off articles and proofreading projects etc. etc.).
I did however do a lot of pre-work and organised in advance to get the information I felt I needed as a journalist covering television, in order to still bring the actual real news. (That comprehensive coverage on SABC2's new on-air imaging is here:
- SABC2 channel rebranding "went to a place we didn't expect," says Pulane Tshabalala, SABC2's acting channel head.
- SABC2 launches a brand-new on-air look, logo and new slogan of "You belong".
- SABC2 personalities appearing in a brand-new promo about SABC2's new on-air indentity and look.
- SABC2 announces the start of new seasons of existing shows starting in March, April and May.
I signed for the couriered goodie bag on Friday which looks very nice in blue as one of the new "official" colours of SABC2 (which now uses yellow, red, blue and green - just like the board game Ludo).
Editor's note: What really irks me (and not just about the SABC2 relaunch media event; it happens all the time for almost all events and news events about television) is South Africa's really bad if not almost non-existent level of reporting about television, our largely bad group of journalist and entertainment reporters and the lack of willingness, desire, know-how, focus, training and seriousness to actually write and cover the news and to cover the news when it happens.
I wasn't even at the SABC2 rebranding event and I was first to write about it on the very night, did numerous stories, did stories for other publications, worked until very late, woke up very early to watch Morning Live on SABC2 and catch and do another story.
It's been two days now since the SABC2 relaunch event. I saw some places shamelessly just reprinting the press release - no independent thought, feeling or analysis. I'm still waiting for other print stories in newspapers or online to read and get more information, another sense, another view, another perspective.
I assume the journalists and entertainment reporters who went, enjoyed the food and entertainment, the free booze, the big Sansui MP3 & Video Player and headsets. Where's the stories? Why do South Africa's journalists tasked with covering television do such a lazy and bad job of actually reporting the news?
We don't need to write gloriously puff pieces about it, or scrape the floor with bile-filled critiques, but if you go and attend an event as a news event on the diary, you need to - since you represent thousands of people called your readers - to write about it and report about it.
We don't have better television in South Africa because there's a lot of bad (inexperienced, unqualified, non-passionate, moronic) people working in television in this country who just don't care and do bad work and who don't care. We also have worse television because the press supposed to cover television is largely simply not doing what they're supposed to be doing. I try and I try very hard.
I've also done it for 13 years and what's interesting is to see how the sense of entitlement of so-called "journalists" covering entertainment and television (sadly TV mostly falls under "entertainment", few publications have a dedicated TV writer) have grown. They will eat your food, drink your booze, forage for (and some blatantly asking for) goodie bags, won't bother to actually ask questions, and then go home or back to work and do ... nothing!
Can everyone - every journalist - who attended the SABC2 channel rebranding launch on Thursday and went home with a goodie bag, ate there and drank there - please, please go and write about it.
Take the press release (don't run the press release - unless you're actually an extension of the SABC's publicity biz machine), read it and write and create your own, thought-about, and researched story about it. The give it to the world to inform the world.
You owe it to your readers, you owe it to your profession of being a messenger and a timeous one at that, you owe it to South Africa since you attended an event of the public broadcaster, and you owe it to the television industry which will never get better and advance if you neglect your duty of holding up a mirror to reflect back as best as possible, what is happening with, and inside, it.
