TOM EATON | I’m no guru, but it seems there’s still room for a groovy conman to coin it

Oxford’s Reuters Institute has published the latest figures measuring SA’s trust in news media, and I am happy to report that the numbers are fantastically good for me. 

First, it turns out that 77% of the South Africans polled said they trust TimesLIVE, which suggests a similar percentage trusts me. This, in turn, means some of you are now ready to hear about the new religion I’m starting, in which followers will sell shares in my non-fungible, technically non-existent cryptocurrency, GuruCoin, to new disciples to ascend higher up The Pyramid of Groovyness. 

Hey, if it worked for the ANC, why can’t it work for me? 

The other bit of excellent news is that 68% of those polled said they trusted Independent Online, which fabricated — but still stands by — the story about the Thembisa decuplets. This figure is especially encouraging because I still have dreams of becoming a full-time novelist, and IOL scoring 68% suggests a large majority of South Africans are keen readers of fiction. 

I’m joking, of course. I’m not starting a religion based on cryptocurrency: it’s going to be based on apocalyptic visions, sex and pudding, like all the best religions. Also, it’s not true IOL makes up everything it publishes. Sometimes other people make it up, like the governments of China and Russia. 

I would, however, like to be a little more serious about one set of numbers in the report, which I find cautiously encouraging. 

According to the institute, South Africans’ trust in the media has rebounded after reaching a low during the Covid-19 pandemic, presumably because we’re no longer being endlessly bombarded with Facebook posts telling us everything is a lie and the world is being run by lizard people. 

Local media now enjoys an overall trust of 61%, as opposed to 49% in 2019 and 48% in 2020. Now, high levels of trust are not necessarily a good thing. I’m sure if you polled Russian, Chinese or North Korean media consumers you’d be told 120% of them trust their media 150%.

Indeed, local media now enjoy an overall trust of 61%, as opposed to 49% in 2019 and 48% in 2020. 

Now, high levels of trust are not necessarily a good thing. I’m sure if you polled Russian, Chinese or North Korean media consumers you’d be told 120% of them trust their media 150%. 

But there’s another number tucked away in the Reuters report that gives me hope. 

In a section headed “Undue influence on the news media”, the report revealed 44% of respondents thought “the media are independent from undue political or government influence” or “undue business or commercial influence”. 

In other words, 61% of the people polled said they generally trust South African media, but at the same time 56% believe those same media are being unduly influenced by politicians and business people. 

At first glance, these sets of figures seem contradictory. But I would suggest they represent a type of stoic pragmatism among media consumers like yourself. 

I know many of us have had to develop fairly robust bullshit detectors over the past decade, and perhaps those two statistics — reflecting general trust, moderated with very reasonable suspicion — reflect how reading the news has become an unconscious process of sifting through and weighing up information; of reading between all sorts of lines. 

For me, that’s good news because in those two sets of numbers I see a readership that isn’t overly cynical — and is therefore still open to good journalism and honest information — but which still takes its news with just enough of a pinch of salt to stay healthy. It’s a combination that tends not to slide into apathy (“You can’t believe anything you read!”) or Q-Anon territory (“You can’t believe anything at all, except this manifesto I found on Facebook!”), instead reacting to failures of the media by demanding better next time. 

Of course, that level of maturity or reading savvy is bad news for GuruCoin and the Pyramid of Groovyness. But the people who wrote and defended the decuplets story are still employed, so perhaps there’s hope for an aspiring conman yet ...