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Abstract
As the Covid-19 pandemic reached South Africa in early March 2020, fear and distress gripped the nation. In the various debates, discussions, and narratives, one notable absence was any substantial critique of China in South Africa media. This is odd given the ample evidence concerning the origins of the virus. With so much of the pandemics narrative shaped by the media, what constitutes truth and fiction became opaque and murky. Added to this malaise are allegations that China is exporting its authoritarian press censorship culture abroad. In developing a methodology which asks if "China is crafting its image', this research examines a sample of South African media between March and June 2020 to ascertain if negative critiques of China are being censorship within South African media. Two dailies, The Star and The Citizen, as well as a number of online media publications are used as the study's sample. The data collected is cross analyzed against the five filters of Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model to determine if China is Manufacturing Consent within South Africa media. There is conclusive evidence that censorship is taking place within South African media.
Keywords: Censorship, Manufacturing Consent, Media analysis, South Africa, Covid-19
1. Introduction
By April 2020, an estimated 3.9 billion people, or half the world's population were in lockdown so to contain the spread of Covid-19 (Meo et al. 2020). With so many people virtually under house arrest, the appeal and agency of the news grew considerably with breaking news becoming highly sensationalized. As radio, television, and online media flooded the world's attention at the hourly rate with morbid statistics, the threat of second and third waves, causality modeling, or possible vaccines, Covid-19 came to occupy a large amount of space in our collective imaginations.
In the fury of so many voices, opinions, and editorials, what came to constitute fact and fiction became unclear. Contributing to this opacity was an aggressive narrative pushed by mainstream media which only put forward regurgitated information without critical analysis nor did tolerate alternative views. In a study by Kashdan (2020), a psychologist by profession, he questioned the consequences of suppressing alternative ideas and perspectives during the Covid-19 crises. To Kashdan, there is something profoundly wrong in claiming a "single right approach"...