The poor Constitution. Its 10th birthday on Monday could never compete for coverage in the face of the Jacob Zuma rape-trial verdict.
But Zuma himself linked the two. After being acquitted, he reportedly told his supporters that the media had tarnished his image, and hadn’t waited for the court to find him guilty. They had said ”I was guilty when I wasn’t”.
Significance? ”The media and so-called intellectuals broke the Constitution. They hindered my basic human right.”
Another link between the court case and the Constitution was implicit in the words of trial Judge Willem van der Merwe. He accused the media of ”selective reporting”, and went on to hammer people who had jumped to conclusions without waiting for all the evidence.
What the judge didn’t ”get” is that all journalism entails selection — and that the Constitution guarantees free choice in this regard. It’s this right that gives rise to the quip that the media’s function is to separate the wheat and chaff … and throw away the wheat.
In the eyes of both the judge and Jacob Zuma, the reporting of this case chose the chaff. Yet the media’s rendition does not need to be identical to that of the court nor that of the Zuma supporters.
That is precisely the essence of media freedom: the media can get it right or wrong, and the citizens can also speak their minds about the media’s performance.
Of course journalists can’t say absolutely anything that they like. The Constitution calls for balancing each right against all others — in this case, media freedom with rights to justice, privacy and dignity.
The point is that even were some media negative towards Zuma, the Constitution would condone this as the right to media freedom — that is, unless the coverage compromised the man’s rights to a fair trial and dignity. There was no such compromise in the Zuma coverage:
- Aside from the special character of cartoons, where did the media set itself up to judge the case? Trying to influence the judge? Forget it.
- As for dignity, Zuma himself was responsible for his deficit on this account. The media didn’t fabricate that he had unsafe sex. Nor did journalists make him the butt of public jibes that he should have taken a cold shower at the start.
Probably, some Zuma media bashers would have wanted coverage to suppress information when the complainant gave evidence — and to give a gospel stamp when the accused gave his version.
While Zuma thanked his supporters for supporting the Constitution — that is, vis-à-vis his rights — he left unspoken the issue of media rights.
Ironically, five years ago the man was a popular speaker making all the ”right” noises at meetings of the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef). Now, however, his calculation seems to be against cultivating the media.
Apparently referring to Sanef’s World Press Freedom Day campaign launched on May 3, Zuma has now accused the media of claiming to cast light ”when in fact they bring darkness”.
His other reported remarks after the trial will win him little sympathy in the newsrooms. Not many journalists will find credible his claim that the media called in political analysts to poke fun at him on television. Fewer still would agree with the wild claim that ”they insulted me, labelled and called me all kinds of names”.
Most journalists resent attacks on their integrity — and not least claims by the pro-Zuma people that the media had been co-opted against him through secret briefings and their own elitist interests.
What journalists do know is that Zuma lost his own gloss through the company he keeps — Schabir Shaik, for example. And since then, his supporters’ continuing anti-constitutional displays of intolerance have won him only suspicion among respecters of free speech.
Further, most journalists would presume that it was the man’s cloak-and-dagger pals who posted e-mail smears to derail the corruption probe by former Scorpions boss Bulelani Ngcuka. Indeed, the same forces seem to have recently revived this underhand tactic to discredit others seen as anti-Zuma.
Common cause is that it was Zuma’s supporters, and not least his current media sidekick Ranjeni Munusamy, who sought to manipulate the media covertly — e.tv and City Press in particular — by planting the false Ngcuka ”spy” story in 2004.
With this history, it is not surprising that many media people today do not see Zuma as suitable leadership material.
That’s not to say the job of journalists is to be kingmakers. But is their necessary and legitimate role to warn about those political forces with a weak record of respect for free media — and, by extension, free speech.
As part of this democratic service, journalists should continue monitoring where the Zuma people stand in relation to the Constitution — and not just his right to a fair trial in his coming corruption case.
What’s crucial is how they regard the rights of the media and, the other side of this coin, the public’s right to know.