The April 30 to May 7 edition of the Mail & Guardian carried a report headlined `NP leader in bizarre sex probe’. The National Party laid a complaint with the Press Ombudsman, Ed Linington, who decided on the matter last week. This was his decision:
It is understandable that the National Party and its leader should feel aggrieved by the publication in the Mail & Guardian of a report that a senior police sex crimes officer was investigating allegations by a convicted thief, John David Hermanus, that Mr Marthinus van Schalkwyk, MP, had paid him for sexual relations.
Nevertheless the act of publication must be looked at in context and then measured against the press code of conduct.
Mail & Guardian editor Phillip van Niekerk made it clear that the Mail & Guardian had been aware of the allegations for months, had been unable to corroborate them, and had, therefore, decided not to publish. Other newspapers had also been approached with the allegations and also decided against publication, for the same reason.
What changed Mr van Niekerk’s mind was not that Hermanus eventually laid a charge with the police, but that the police appeared to be taking it seriously enough to act swiftly and put the investigation into the hands of the Western Cape’s senior sex crimes officer Attie Trollip.
The charge was laid at Porterville police station and was passed up the ladder to National Police Commissioner George Fivaz and Mr Gerald Morkel, the new Western Cape Leader of the NP. At that stage Trollip contacted the Mail & Guardian and that call persuaded the newspaper to publish.
Mr Morkel has asked the police to investigate urgently at high level in order to clear Mr van Schalkwyk and avoid any possible suspicion of a cover-up. Mr Morkel’s request was based on the belief that the allegations were false.
It is to be regretted that the role Mr Morkel played was not explained in the report complained of, but only set out in the following week’s report. It would have placed new light on the investigation and a new perspective. The police investigation, far from being “bizarre”, would have had a logical explanation that was favourable to Mr van Schalkwyk and the NP.
It is not clear why Mr Morkel’s role was not revealed. It seems strange that the reports did not ask the obvious question: why were the police acting so swiftly and at high level? In this respect, the newspaper could have been more thorough, especially as the editor described the police investigation as the crux of the report and persuaded him to publish.
As a result, the report was unfair in that respect, because it did not reveal something favourable to the NP and Mr van Schalkwyk.
I do not find support for (National Party MP) Mr PA Matthee’s contention that the way the report was written and the inclusion of all the details was intended to show support for the allegations and that the Mail & Guardian really believed they were true.
What he called the “gory details” were included in that part of the report where it was explaining the investigations the reporters had made and the lack of support they had found for these specific allegations.
The details were included to show that they could not be corroborated, rather than for the reason suggested by Mr Matthee. In the context of a police investigation of the same allegations, the newspaper was justified in reporting the outcome of its own investigation.
When the police investigate a senior politician, such as the Leader of the Opposition, the press are entitled to report on it. Mr Matthee’s suggestion as to how this should be done – without revealing the person’s identity – would aggravate matters by fuelling rumour and causing suspicion to fall on people other than the person under investigation.
He did not contend that the report should not have been published in any form, but that by identifying Mr van Schalkwyk it had defamed him and damaged the National Party.
Mr van Niekerk showed that it is common South African press practice to report on the private affairs of public figures. He contended that, in any event, this investigation had moved out of the private into the public domain, propelled there, in part, by Mr Morkel.
Suppression of high-level police investigations into allegations against a senior politician cannot be justified as being in the public interest. It would be wrong to withhold such information from the public of a country whose constitution provides for “a democratic and open society” and founds the state on, among other values, “accountability, responsiveness and openness” and sets out to protect freedom of expression which includes freedom to receive or impart information or ideas.
The constitution also gives everyone the right to have their dignity respected and protected, and the report can be seen to be imparting information about a process to protect Mr van Schalkwyk’s dignity by disposing of the allegations against him.
The Mail & Guardian was therefore justified in reporting on the matter. It set out the information fairly and accurately. It did so in a balanced manner by pointing out the absence of corroboration and other negative aspects of the allegations and the person making them.
The report was not out of line with general newspaper practice. It did not contravene the press code, except in one respect mentioned above.
This contravention led to omission of a vital piece of information: the real reason for the swift and high-level police investigation, which was favourable to Mr van Schalkwyk and the NP.