ago – we came to a mutual decision
that if we couldn’t tell the kinds of
stories we needed to tell, it was
probably better not to be there. So
we tell stories in South Africa that
constantly push the envelope. It’s
very important for our credibility.
Our sub-slogan is “You have the
right to see it all.” And we try very
hard to live by that and we’ve
succeeded.
Was the Oscar Pistorius trial an
opportunity to do something very
different?
It was really a game changer in
many respects. It was obvious to
me that we should cover the trial in
real detail, because it had such
enormous international appeal.
And I felt that we, as local
broadcasters, needed to be the ones
leading the fray, and that we would
be the ones who would do it best –
because it’s our story, in many ways.
It felt to me that what was
lacking in court reporting in
general was being able to go into
the court room, and film and
transmit from the court.
Parliaments around the world are
broadcast live, and the judiciary is
acting on the very laws that
Parliament legislates. So it seemed
silly to me that you had the
legislative body open and
transparent, but not the judicial
arm. I felt that we should find a
way to address that.
What was the process of getting
approval to film in court?
It was quite an exercise. First of all,
there were other channels that had
applied to broadcast the trial, and I
heard that they were going to be
opposed. I wondered what grounds
they were being opposed on.
I went behind the scenes to the
National Prosecuting Authority and
to the Pistorius camp and
addressed their attorneys to see
what the issues were. The
Pistorians were very anti-the idea
from the beginning. They made it
very clear that they wouldn’t
cooperate. But the state was open to
discussion because they saw the
need for transparency, and they
saw the educative value.
We also realised that the judges
were very nervous, and ultimately
it would have to be the decision of
a judge to allow cameras into the
court. They didn’t want to have the
disruption of cameramen and
crews and they were very
concerned about journalists using
extracts uncontextualised.
I realised we could address the
concern of having crews present by
using remote cameras, and there
are phenomenal remote cameras
available that could give us HD
quality and would be silent. We
would put them in the court and
operate them in a control room in
an office just down the passage.
Did you know then what type of
coverage you would be doing?
I realised if we could give them a
channel – a proper, dedicated
channel – we could give the trial
live, uninterrupted coverage for the
whole day. And we could repeat
that coverage in the middle of the
night. And we could do analytical
programming between the closure
of court and the repeat late at night,
we could then do in-depth
journalistic interpretation and
discussion.
It was a bold thing. People said,
“How are you going to manage to
fill a whole channel?” But we
managed to fill it very well and we
developed a series of programmes.
One of them,
The Legal Round Table
,
was nominated for an AIB Award.
Early in the morning we’d go
live with a breakfast show and
analyse what had happened the
day before. We would recap it and
bring in legal experts, a former
judge, social media experts, editors
and other journalists. Then at
lunchtime we would do an hour-
long show, which scored record-
breaking ratings. We had enormous
audiences during lunch. Office
THE CHANNEL
|
ISSUE 1 2015
|
37
Mazarakis
with Dario Milo,
themedia lawyer
who helped Carte
Blanche get the
court order to
cover the trial
I think
we’re on
the cutting
edge of
something
big
“
”
JOURNALISM
|
THE CHANNEL
