”Annan: the SA connection”, the Mail & Guardian‘s headline declared dramatically a few weeks ago. The story, placed prominently on page 3, dealt with the conflict-of-interest allegations against United Nations chief Kofi Annan.
The claims centred on the fact that his son, Kojo, received payments from a Swiss company that was granted a lucrative monitoring contract under the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq. Annan has been cleared of wrongdoing.
I was immediately drawn into reading the report: any South African connection to this major international scandal would have been sensational.
The intro said the younger Annan had ”extended his lobbying efforts to South Africa” on behalf of the Swiss firm. Finally, eight paragraphs down, the hard facts emerged: in 1998 the two Annans had lunch together in Durban during the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, and somebody said Kojo had told his father about his business plans in Iraq. The witness later retracted his evidence.
There was no mention of South Africa in the rest of the story.
So the South African connection amounted to the fact that father and son once lunched together in Durban. The mountain was revealed to be a molehill, and a small one at that.
Headlines are tricky things. They need to sum up the essence of a story, and do so in such a way that the reader’s interest is pricked.
Writing good headlines is not easy. Readers sometimes don’t realise that it’s not the reporter who writes the headline, but a sub-editor. Headlines are written to size; the page design determines how many words can be used. Under considerable time pressure, subs have to write a headline that fits and sums up the story in an interesting and, if possible, clever way.
The more dramatic the headline, particularly on the front page, the more papers are sold. So there is always a temptation to push the headline as far as possible, to sharpen its point.
As long as the story supports the headline, that’s fine. But an over-written headline, like the one on the Annan story, simply creates expectations that are then disappointed.
There have been other examples in the M&G. In February the front page announced: ”Govt plans new clamps on judges”. The story itself was headlined with the more measured ”Judiciary faces shake-up”.
To call government plans to introduce new measures of training and oversight for judges a shake-up seems reasonable. But to call them new clamps, (which can also be read to mean that there are already other clamps in place) is overstated, even though there are indisputably fears about the impact of these measures on the independence of the judiciary.
And in February, there was a poster that declared: ”Mbeki must go in 2007 ‒ ANCYL”. The wording seemed to suggest the ANC Youth League wanted President Thabo Mbeki out of the presidency. In fact, the league was arguing against a proposal that he could remain on as president of the ANC while the country’s presidency passed on to a successor, as required by the Constitution. That poster seemed to stray into territory that was deliberately misleading.
Newspapers do themselves no favours by writing overstated headlines. In the long run, it damages their credibility. Nobody minds a little bit of seduction. But in this area as much as others, it’s not a good idea to raise expectations you can’t satisfy.
A column by Lisa Vetten, of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, drew a complaint from Ariel Damon, the convenor of the South African Pagan Rights Alliance. The column was headed ”Witches, angels and the media”, and drew attention to the way in which the media perpetuate stereo-types of women.
She contrasted the representation of Leigh Matthews, the Johannesburg student who was kidnapped and then murdered, with that of Annemarie Engelbrecht, who killed her partner after years of abuse. Matthews ”radiates goodness” and looks ”the part of the hapless victim”, while ”dark-haired Engelbrecht evokes a different set of associations: witches and other dark ladies who lead men to their doom”, wrote Vetten.
This reference drew Damon’s complaint. She felt that Vetten had perpetuated ”an extremely hurtful portrayal of witches as harmful to the well-being of others”. The headline, which juxtaposed witches and angels, was ”a deliberate device which places witches in an antagonistic role toward all that she perceives to be good and wholesome”.
Witchcraft was a recognised minority religion in South Africa, wrote Damon, and demanded ”the right to be protected against religious discrimination”.
It is hard to find merit in the complaint. The column referred to a whole series of cartoon representations — besides witches, there were ”black widows” and elsewhere, ”one-eyed villains, peg leg pirates and mutant wrongdoers”.
These terms were used to illustrate the one-dimensional way in which women are represented. The point could not have been made by using neutral terms, since their negative connotations were precisely what was at issue.
The Mail & Guardian’s ombud provides an independent view of the paper’s journalism. If you have any complaints you would like addressed, you can contact me at [email protected]. You can also phone the paper on (011) 727 7000 and leave a message