The excellent is truly excellent

April 17th, 2011

Every year this time, a group of us sit down and study the best journalism of the year. We are judging the Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism, and it allows us a rare chance to focus on the top 5% of our reporting.

The process gives a corrective to the time spent lamenting the quality of our journalism. What becomes clear is that there are more investigative reporting teams in more local institutions doing more of this tough and demanding work than ever before – and this runs sharply against the international trend where newsrooms in most of the biggest economies are doing less of the time-consuming, expensive and risky detective work.

We had 45 entries from 20 outlets, including all media types: print, television, radio and online. This includes the stalwarts who have been doing it for years, like the Mail & Guardian (previously my own newspaper, I must declare), Sunday Times and MNet’s Carte Blanche; those who have come relatively recently to drink at this pool, like the SABC (in the form of the Special Assignment programme) and Media24 (owners of Beeld and Die Burger); and newcomers like Politicsweb and Voice of the Cape community radio station.

Perhaps the latter was the most refreshing: a series of five pieces on the battle of Hangberg in Hout Bay, when police and squatters came to blows. It was a rare piece of in-depth storytelling from the community radio sector, evidence again that good reporting is not driven by massive resources, but by a journalistic determination and a culture of probing and questioning.

The range of material was wide – including not just the big political corruption stories but also white collar crime, environmental scandal (water and rhino poaching) and local controversies (like Durban’s multimillionaire policeman and his dubious city tenders).

New techniques stood out, particularly the Media24 team’s harnessing of computer power to find stories in masses of otherwise incomprehensible data. This put them at the cutting edge of investigative reporting.

Just as we were ploughing through the material, journalists were reeling from the Media Own Goal of the Year, when a newspaper made the mistake everyone was most dreading: wrongly quoting Julius Malema criticizing Jacob Zuma. Once again, the focus moved to the worst of our reporting, and the reluctance in some institutions to deal with problems with the same firmness they expect of public officials.

Reading all this material, one is reminded that to criticise the worst of our journalism without praising the best – as our politicians are so quick to do – is to tell only half the story. One cannot but be impressed by how the best of our journalists are keeping a check on public figures, and holding them to account for public moneys and responsibilities. Politicians like Blade Nzimande and Jeremy Cronin are seeing this as hostile to democracy, when it is so clearly playing a central role in fighting the corruption and lavish miss-spending which impede our capacity to deal with pressing social issues.

As parliament reopens it examination of the “Secrecy Bill” one has to ask: how many of these stories might be blocked if this legislation is passed in anything like the form in which it has been tabled? And will this material see the light of day under a regulatory tribunal which is set up and controlled by the very politicians who feature so prominently in these stories, as proposed by the ANC?

It was a year in which an investigative reporter was ostentatiously arrested two days after publishing a major story about the chief of police, and then released without charge. But that did not stop those bold reporters who were determined to rake the muck where there was muck to be raked.

This award is unusual in that it recognizes just one great story, and one-runner up. There is none of the multiple categories which usually mean that half the journalists present at such ceremonies get something.

But I can tell you that it took many hours of argument and debate to find that one outstanding story. The winner will be announced on Friday.

*This column first appeared in Business Day, 13 April 2011

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Media regulation