Journos don’t deserve a pedestal
Our legal columnist takes a swipe at those — including this newspaper — outraged at the Section 205 notices served on journalists
The responses to the notices served in terms of Section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act on journalists and newspaper editors last week were predictable: the journalists let out a huge collective wail and complained that the repressive weapons of apartheid were again being used to invade and compromise their professional duty and integrity; and National Police Commissioner George Fivaz immediately back-pedalled and said he meant no such thing.
Both responses show, now that this society is officially free, how little even informed and influential people understand that every civil liberty carries with it a social duty.
Section 205, despite some recent amendments to ameliorate its more repugnant features, does remain too wide. But some such information-gathering device is essential in this lawless society of ours, and the manner of its use against the journalists last week seemed largely unexceptionable.
They were told, in effect, to deliver photographs (or video film in some cases), some of which had already been published, of the People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) murder and mayhem currently being waged in Cape Town. No journalist was called on to reveal an anonymous source, or to make available unpublished notes, or to make a self-incriminating statement, or to testify for the prosecution; and no “relationship of trust” between a newspaper and the community it serves was put at risk.
Any bystander, not just a pressman, could have taken the photographs, and in anyone else’s hands the police’s right to that evidence would be unquestionable.
So there really doesn’t seem to be any legitimate professional objection, unless the journalists’ profession believes that co-operation with the police is, somehow, “taking sides” and therefore subversive of the journalistic ethic of objectivity. That argument, though, holds no water.
Firstly, journalists, like all other social institutions, ought to take the side of social stability and order (which is quite a different thing from supporting the government, or refraining from criticism of the authorities, or exposing corruption or, indeed, fighting in the underdog’s corner in any of the political or economic conflicts that are natural to modern society).
But, and more importantly, any member of the public who requires press photographs as evidence in support of his civil litigation can easily subpoena the photographer concerned to produce them to the registrar of the supreme court.
In fact, in civil cases, outsiders are routinely called to court in this way: auditors to produce their clients’ financial records; doctors to testify on the health of their patients; and mere onlookers to tell the court who jumped the red robot. For goodness’ sake, if outsiders could not be compelled to give their evidence, most disputes would be incapable of any rational, fair and effective adjudication.
There is no reason why journalists should be immune from these standard procedures. The press would have a point if, for example, its system of anonymous sources was under attack. But it is not, and its misguided protest illustrates a misunderstanding of what it is about journalism that deserves and requires protection.
Fivaz should have been a lot less defensive about his actions. He is not responsible for the wide ambit of Section 205, and nor is he responsible for the unfair and intimidatory way in which it was used in the past. He has some very ugly customers in the Cape to bring to book, and he needs all the assistance he can get.
Every subject of the state, including every journalist, has a civic duty to assist the police in solving crimes and bringing suspects before court for trial. If this assistance is not volunteered, the authorities fail in their duty if they do not, within the limits set by the Constitution, compel it. Section 205 provides one such means of compulsion, and the journalists owe it to the rest of us to co-operate with the police in the Pagad matter to the limited extent required.
As it turned out, the Cape attorney general backed down on the 205 notices and the government lost yet another opportunity to at least look decisive in its “fight” against crime.