Publication: Mail and Guardian Issued: Date: 2006-11-15 Reporter: Zwelinzima Vavi

The Media Must Own Up To Its Massive Blunder

 

Publication 

Mail and Guardian
Date

2006-11-15

Reporter

 Zwelinzima Vavi

Web Link

www.mg.co.za

 

"A storm in a teacup" is how State Prosecutor Billy Downer summed up the controversy that has erupted since Judge Hilary Squires denied having said that Jacob Zuma and Schabir Shaik had a “generally corrupt relationship”.

Downer could not be more wrong! This episode raises fundamental questions for all South Africans, but especially for the media and the judiciary, whose credibility has been critically wounded by what this story has revealed about the way they operate.

Cosatu has already apologised to the judge for comments we have made about him and his judgement based on false media reports. We also urged the media to apologise, but so far only one daily newspaper has published a grudging apology. Unfortunately, the rest have not followed suit. Editors and reporters have not said they are sorry for their failure to read Squires’s judgement line by line, nor their constant repetition of the misreported words. They have expressed no regret at the damage inflicted on the people involved, especially Jacob Zuma. Nor have all the “experts” and “analysts” who pontificated on the issue and drew false conclusions from media mis-reports.

The media have to accept responsibility for a massive blunder, admit they erred and apologise, instead of seeking to apportion blame elsewhere.

Cosatu has also demanded the resignation or dismissal of the five Supreme Court of Appeal judges. Even though this issue does not in any way affect their verdict against Shaik, it raises questions as to whether any of their findings were influenced by the media frenzy.

The five judges are on a damage-control mission, trying to deny that the reference to a “generally corrupt relationship”, which they now admit was “incorrectly attributed” to Squires, in any way affected their verdict on Shaik’s appeal, but was merely a phrase that summarised their findings.

They are covering up their mistake by introducing a new form of judge-made law, which redefines the now false finding of a “generally corrupt relationship” with one of “mutually beneficial symbiosis” between the two men.

This seems to mean that all the courts have to prove in a corruption trial is that you did some favours and received some other favours. They don’t have to show that any favour corresponded to any particular other favour *1.

It is inexcusable for such senior appeal judges not to have even studied the transcript of the original trial but repeated what they had read in media editorial comments about what the trial judge is supposed to have said, and then tried to cover this up by inventing a new “crime” of “mutually beneficial symbiosis” to keep alive the smears against Jacob Zuma.

They cannot expect people to have confidence in judges who can make such elementary mistakes. What chance will ordinary citizens have of getting a fair hearing if such senior judges are as careless as this in such a high-profile case?

They must apologise to Jacob Zuma for prejudicing him and presenting him in such a negative light. This blunder would have any judge anywhere in the democratic world fired. But in South Africa? We are too divided to be objective, I guess!

The question that follows is whether Jacob Zuma can really have a fair trial.

This latest debacle powerfully reinforces our conviction that elements within the media, including those who attended the infamous off-the-record briefing, and elements within the state, have been systematically trying to discredit, victimise and destroy Jacob Zuma, who had been identified as a political foe. Many journalists, contrary to their claims to independence and objectivity, are embedded in different camps *2, speaking on behalf of vested interests and pressure groups.

The “generally corrupt relationship” lie follows a pattern of the media inventing a story and then repeating it until it is seen as the undisputed truth.

Why do the media do this? As I wrote in the Mail & Guardian earlier this year, to understand how media myths become the accepted truth, “we have to locate the press in our social and political context”. The class struggle plays out in our media newsrooms, the courtrooms and in every other area of society.

The media is a tool with which the capitalist class imposes its values and ideas on the society, but that does not absolve the individual editors and journalists from their responsibility to report and comment in a fair and truthful way, or excuse them for their part in perpetuating lies.

If no one in the media apologises for these blunders it will reinforce the suspicion that they have a narrow partisan interest in the events it is reporting. They themselves could be the biggest losers, because scandals like this latest one carry the danger that so many people will distrust the media that it could pave the way for a future dictator to “make the media behave responsibly” *3 by curbing media freedom, and when that happens, no one will be there to defend the free media because they would have discredited themselves so much.

Zwelinzima Vavi is general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions

With acknowledgements to Zwelinzima Vavi[] and Mail & Guardian.


*1       Nonsense, while the SCA have found that there was a generally corrupt relationship between Schabir Shaik and Jacob Zuma, they cite four instances of the latter doing favours in return for the former's 238 payments of money.

They never mentioned the favours given by Robin and paid for by Shaik at 20 kZAR to 30 kZAR per month.


*2      Now this, me hearties, is true.


*3      2009 is only 2 years away.


My but a lot of hogwash this Zuma supporter spews forth.