It must be an unsettling experience: the phone rings and some upstart journalist wants comment on that particular piece of dirty washing that you’d hoped nobody knew about.
The call proves that far from being well hidden, your little secret is about to be displayed to the world. And you have far too little time to develop some kind of defence.
Investigative journalism works that way. In months of painstaking work, documents have to be assembled, sources interviewed, information checked and double-checked.
When the story seems solid, the subject of the investigation is called and given an opportunity to tell their side of the story. It is one of the rituals of journalistic engagement.
In the case of the Sunday Times probe into Tony Yengeni’s discounted 4×4, the paper flew a reporter to Cape Town to interview him. They were sure of their facts, the evidence was unimpeachable. But fairness demanded that he be given a proper opportunity to respond. And ”proper” meant more than leaving a message on a cellphone that he might or might not have received in time.
The problem is that the owners of this kind of dirty laundry sometimes misuse the opportunity. Instead of simply putting forward whatever explanation they might have, they try to stop the story from being published.
Sandi Majali of Imvume took this route with a story in the Oilgate scandal, which showed that some of the money he obtained from the state oil company had been paid to the relatives of Cabinet ministers. It is a pity that the court in that case chose to allow press freedom to be trumped so easily, but in the end the report appeared anyway.
South Africa’s press code explicitly recognises the problem. It says that a paper can ambush its target — by not asking for comment — if the paper fears that it might be stopped from publishing, or that evidence could be destroyed or witnesses intimidated.
This tactic has a variant, which Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee calls the ”pre-emptive strike”. This was used by the Presidency some time ago, when the M&G asked for comment on a report that it was about to spend a further R8-billion on eight massive military transport aircraft from Airbus. Although the report raised some questions, it did not report this as a scandal.
While Cabinet spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe confirmed the deal on the day before publication, the Department of Transport issued a general media statement about it. This meant the story was widely reported in other media and the M&G’s thunder was effectively stolen.
Haffajee regards this kind of action as a deliberate attempt to undercut the paper, and has since implemented a policy of limiting the time given to the subjects of stories for comment.
The issue came up again more recently when Frank Chikane, Director General in the Presidency, complained about coverage of bogus e-mails that sought to paint him as plotting against former deputy president Jacob Zuma. That matter, which I have previously discussed here, dragged on for months, and was ultimately settled through the publication of an agreed-upon note.
In the end, it mainly revolved around how clear the paper was in indicating that it regarded the e-mails as bogus. A subsidiary point made by Chikane was largely lost: he also implied he had not been given enough time to formulate a response.
In one of her notes in the lengthy correspondence that took the matter to the brink of court action, Haffajee offered to allow more time for response from the Presidency in return for an undertaking not to use ”pre-emptive strikes”. There was no reply to this particular point.
Who is in the right here? On the one hand, it is reasonable for people to ask for enough time to prepare a proper response, particularly if the matter is complex. After all, this may sometimes include finding documents and assembling scattered information, particularly for government departments.
And the paper can’t expect the subject of its report to take much account of its competition with other media. The possibility of being scooped can’t weigh as heavily as the possibility of a story being suppressed.
But a public institution such as the Presidency should take its duty of accountability to the public very seriously. It should not be playing games of this kind.
It is also perfectly reasonable for the paper to safeguard its own interests, particularly if it has invested significant resources in researching a story. It is a competitive world.
In general, I think the paper should allow people enough time to respond. But if there are real fears that they might take advantage of the situation, there is nothing wrong with keeping them on a reasonable, but tight leash.
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 011 250 7300 and leave a message