/ 30 January 2014

Battle over old-age home reveals media power

Battle Over Old Age Home Reveals Media Power

This is a story about an old-age home in Jericho, a remote village in the North West, and what happened when the media came to town.

The home was a community ­initiative, founded some years ago by a local woman. After some time, her husband died and she withdrew from the project to observe a mourning period. Others took key roles at the home, and also moved it to new premises that became available when a local school moved elsewhere.

At this point, things get a little unclear. It seems tension developed because the founder wanted to play a greater role again and felt marginalised by the new management. Conditions were poor.

Enter a reporter for a newspaper in distant Johannesburg (not this one), who came to investigate. Accompanied by members of a local residents' committee sympathetic to the founder, he visited the home and found residents sleeping on the floor and unhappiness about a range of issues.

The story focused on the accusation that the home had been 'hijacked' from the founder, and on alleged mistreatment of the inmates. The new manager was briefly quoted, and took up the matter with the press council.

She complained that it was untrue that she had hijacked the home, said some photographs had been staged, and that the claims of abuse were untrue.

I was on the panel that heard the complaint. It's some time ago now, but although the details aren't ­material, I remember it as particularly ­interesting.

Besides the defending newspaper, both sides to the dispute over the Jericho home came to the hearing. It was humbling to see the trouble they had taken to assert their version of the truth. They had put time and effort into preparing their case, and invested money, which can't have been plentiful, in bringing their ­delegations to Johannesburg.

These were not members of the elite, who have much easier access to mechanisms such as the courts or the press council.

Viewed with urban, middle-class eyes, the home may not have seemed worth ­fighting over. Documents handed in painted a picture of a facility staffed largely by volunteers, where beds were items of considerable value, and a Christmas bonus consisted of R400 and a chicken, mealiemeal and other groceries, carefully itemised.

And yet in Jericho it represented a considerable asset that was able to generate a small income for some, and the conflict over it was fierce. Communities are often written about as if they have one voice when in fact there is plenty of fighting at the grassroots.

That single newspaper article mattered a great deal to the people involved. Not only did it have a real effect on the matter, bringing an intervention from government officials, it mattered for its own sake.

The complainants wanted to have their own version accepted, and focused on proving that the accusations reflected in the report were false. Minutes of meetings were produced, and an attempt was made to prove bad faith on the part of the reporter.

The hearing was not always easy, as we struggled to communicate across the hurdles of language and privilege.

Ultimately, we did not need to decide who was right in the Jericho dispute itself, but whether the journalism was fair. And the story did not make it clear enough that these accusations came from one side, nor did it give the current management of the home enough chance to respond. Our ruling broadly made those points.

It is an easy and common model in journalism: an accusation of some kind is presented, journalists check for evidence to make sure it's not a complete thumbsuck, get some response from the other side, and write the story accordingly. It could be about corruption in high places, racism in student accommodation, or the mistreatment of pensioners.

It's a valid approach, and often exposes important issues. But we should not lose sight of the fact that even when we use the usual mechanisms to attribute the accusations to their source, readers of all kinds often understand them as coming from the newspaper itself.

In this case, the word "hijacked" was placed in quotes to indicate that this was an accusation by one side, but the complainants still understood the piece as being a personal attack on them by the reporter.

The voice of the newspaper does in fact emerge in these ways: simply the fact that the story focused on the complaints against the current management gave them more weight than the response.

A more complex story was somewhat lost in the process, which might have peeled back a layer or two of complexity to deal with conflict over an old-age home in a remote village.

How are things now in Jericho? I don't know. Like so many other stories from poor communities, it has dropped back into obscurity. Even the original story seems to have disappeared from internet archives.

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 him at [email protected]. You can also phone on 011 250 7300 and leave a message.