» Lessons from the eTV subpoena saga

Lessons from the eTV subpoena saga

January 26th, 2010

Fortunately, good sense has prevailed in the sage of the subpoena to force eTV to identify the criminals they recently interviewed. The police have reportedly agreed to follow the path of consultation and conflict-avoidance set out in the 1999 agreement between government and editors.

There are a few things to learn from this, though. We learnt how dangerous is the police commissioner’s liking for populist bluster. Hopefully, he learnt the value of taking a deep breath before launching an attack of this sort.

One important lesson, I think, was the danger of journalists getting involved directly in anti-crime campaigns rather than reporting on them. Primedia honcho Yusuf Abramjee has been outspoken on the subpoena and has seemed more like he was wearing the hat of chief promoter of Radio 702’s Crime Line rather than that of a journalist.

He backed the police in this issue, disregarded the fundamental journalistic principle of protecting one’s source and said “each case had to be considered on its merits” (as if there was no basic principle involved). That was a crime-fighter speaking, not a journalist. Yusuf is demonstrating the danger of wearing both these hats.

I am an admirer of 702’s Crime Line campaign, and think it valuable community service stuff. But it has to be kept separate from journalism - or it will dilute that station’s commitment to good reporting.

At the end of they day, police and journalists have to learn to live and work side by side, understanding each other’s role and assisting each other in that. But we have some way to go to develop such understanding and breaking down such outbreaks of mutually destructive hostility.

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Media regulation

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Anton Harber: Media

Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio

Daily newspaper sales, South Africa
(Ave sales Jul-Dec)
1960 - 681 053 (Population 17,3m)
1970 - 723 566 (22m)
1980 - 803 229 (27,5m)
1990 - 1 214 396 (35,2m)
2000 - 1 117 886 (44m)
2006 - 1 600 000 (47,3m)
2011 - 1 310 000 (49m)

(Sources: ABC and nationmaster.com)

“It was pure political theatre. The excited room was filled with government officials, government consultants, quasi-government agencies, politicians and pupils from government schools. As if on cue, the room rang with applause as one education victory after another was claimed. This was, after all, the annual drama in which the minister of basic education appears on stage to announce the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results …” - Educationist Jonathan Jansen, one of the few with the credibility to look critically at this “celebratory orgy of mediocrity”.

“The (Incwala) ceremony is cloaked in secrecy and marks the (Swaziland) king’s return to public life after a period of withdrawal and spiritual contemplation. Among its highlights is a symbolic demonstration by the king of his power and dominance in a process involving his penetration of a black bull … But last year’s selected bull, according to a recent account from a whistle-blowing Incwala initiate, objected strongly, and threw off Africa’s last absolute monarch.” - Some surprises in this (un-bylined) account of Swaziland politics in Southern African Report

“When the Great Zucchini arrived that Saturday morning, Don had no idea who he was. Frankly, he didn’t look like a great anything. He looked like a house painter, Don thought, with some justification. He wears no costume. He was in painter’s pants, a coffee-stained shirt and a two-day growth of beard. He toted his beat-up props in beat-up steamer trunks, with ripped faux leather and broken hinges hanging askew.” - A classic of magazine profiling, by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.

Diepsloot (Jonathan Ball, 2011)

Diesploot: Of Frogs and Fractals, a public lecture at the University of Johannesburg, 4 August 2011

Troublemakers - The Best of South Africa’s Investigative Journalism (Jacana, 2101), edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn

Introduction - The Troublemakers: An account of the rise of a new wave of investigative journalism in South Africa.

What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic, edited by Kristin Palitza, Natalie Ridgard, Helen Struthers and Anton Harber (Fanele, 2010)