Wild-hair, hard-drinking and in pursuit of the bad guys

October 31st, 2009

Great journalism comes from those who are prepared to swim against the tide, tirelessly and fearlessly. A few of them were in town this week.

Andrew Jennings is a journalist of the old school. With a mop of wild silver hair, he is hard-drinking, hard-living and passionate about the pursuit of crooks and thieves. His focus has been the international sporting bodies, some of which we know well, like Fifa and the International Olympic Committee.
His views on Fifa leadership are not subtle: crooks, thieves, bribe-takers and nepotists who seek out corrupt people around the world to work with. He hastily added: “I am not talking about you, Danny (Jordaan). I am talking in general about how Fifa works.”

In his presentation to our Power Reporting Workshop this weekend, Jennings outlined a long history of crooked elections, outright bribery and family inter-connections in Fifa. Wearing the traditional photographer’s multi-pocketed waistcoat and glasses perched at the end of his nose, he had the audience rolling with laughter as he ripped into what he called Fifa’s “characters of the night”, and showed films of his lifelong pursuit of them and their shenanigans. He had a rich tale to tell of why South Africa was crooked out of its first World Cup bid. He made no suggestion that bribes had been used to win the second bid, though he does believe some of our rivals were generous with their gifts and this was why other African countries had not supported our bid.

Fifa is not just a case of corruption, he says. It is an organisation that works and is structured like the mafia. It is organised crime, he says.

On doesn’t have to agree with Jennings, but one can’t help liking and admiring him. He is passionate, he is committed, and he loves nothing more than tormenting officials accused of malfeasance. And he is one of the few who hold Fifa’s feet to the fire.

He is certainly not of the mainstream school of cool, dispassionate and cautious reporters. He is out to expose the scoundrels and will stop at little to do so. He has never been successfully sued by Fifa or the IOC, despite threats to do so.

He speaks with utter contempt of the sports journalists who take Fifa at face value and seldom ask the tough questions. They are “happy-clappers” who would do better leaving journalism and joining revivalist churches.

Danny Schechter is another such character. He is a long-standing media critic, a boy from what he calls “The Independent Republic of the Bronx” who has worked in radio, television and print and once ran the South African Now television series, which tackled apartheid in the 1980s. He has in the last few years carved out a role for himself giving a hard time to financial journalists, their failures and the small steps of compromise (taking gifts, free lunches, travel…) that lead to their corruption. He has a series of books and films on this subject. He argues that financial journalists have become part of the financial elite, and business media has been compromised by taking adverts from some of worst culprits of the financial crisis, and as a result failing to ask the questions which needed to be asked.

Apart from unruly hair and photographers’ jackets, he has in common with Jennings the fact that he is not dispassionate in any way. He is a crusader for better media and more thorough reporting, and committed to tearing apart shoddy journalism.

Interestingly, some of the targets of these guys’ criticism ducked and dived rather than come and debate with them. Rich Mkhondo of the Local Organising Committee of 2010 accepted an invitation to share a panel with Jennings, and did not turn up. Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day, declined to join the discussion, saying he thought we were setting him up and implying he was bored with the debate.
It was a pity that Mkhondo did not come, but a shame that Bruce did not care enough to engage on an issue central to his work and his public profile. Bruce is giving an excuse he would accept from any other public figure.

The good news is that it became clear that investigative reporting in South Africa, and Africa as a whole, is alive and kicking. In South Africa, there are powerful investigative teams working at the Mail & Guardian and Media24. The M&G team is going semi-independent, setting themselves up as a non-profit organisation, half funded and controlled by the newspaper, half by foundations and other backers. It is new hybrid model for how to do investigations, and is going to be fascinating to watch.

Media24 has hired South Africa’s leading investigative reporter, Jacques Pauw, to head a new team and have given him some resources to do it. The MNet programme, Carte Blanche, does some very strong work, though within firm parameters of political sensitivity. They will tackle many dubious characters, but not the politicians. There are occasional investigative flurries in places like the Sunday Times and City Press, and even occasionally at a community publication like the Umjinid Guardin in Barberton. And there are two committed muckrakers who should get more attention. At the Daily Dispatch in East London, under the visionary leadership of editor Andrew Trench, they are doing more investigative work in a more imaginative way than anyone else – and with very few resources. They are living proof that what it takes is not vast resources, but a commitment from newsroom leaders.

The Dispatch broke into this territory with their award-winning expose of child mortality at Frere Hospital two years ago. Since then they have done a major look into the killing of foreigners in their region, and into the provision of housing. They published in the paper and online, using bold multimedia to give voice to ordinary people affected by these stories.

They even did one fun investigation into road rage. They had their reporters stop at robots and stall their cars, using stopwatches to see how long it took those behind them to react and then record who reacted in what way. They used computer-based analysis to break down the demographics of road rage. Their findings? That white women were the worst behaved and black taxi drivers the most helpful.
At Noseweek, veteran muckraker Martin Welz is relentless in his pursuit of all sorts of white collar criminals and who, for example, was one of the few onto Brett Kebble before it became public knowledge.

At this week’s conference, there were delegates from 18 African countries, where investigative journalists are doing some remarkable work under often difficult circumstances. Many are members of the Forum of African Investigative Reporters which is coordinating transnational investigations among these reporters.

This is very different to the situation in the US and UK, where committed reporters are having to find new ways to fund their investigations. There is a new wave of philanthropy-funded independent reporting by non-profit organisations, and mainstream media – many of which have had to close down their investigative desks due to financial pressures – are more often using this material.

It is great that there are these resources, and that there are teams in our newsroom doing this kind of work. But the overriding message is that it is passionate, crusading individuals who rise above the routines of daily stenographic reporting and are prepared to go against the flow of public opinion. They don’t need huge resources, but they do need guts, commitment and editors with vision. They need a sense of fairness and balance, but they also have to break out of the straitjackets of objectivity and dispassion.

*This column first appeared in Beeld, 31 October 2009

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism