There is a long history of disastrous journalism around the world. George Claassen examines five cases the Tembisa 10 saga resembles and what impact the Tembisa reports have had on South African journalism.
Janet Cooke. Jayson Blair. Stephen Glass. Jack Kelley. Claas Relotius.
Five names of infamy in journalism who seriously eroded and tarnished the credibility and trustworthiness of the profession over the past four decades. With the fake news by former Sunday Times reporters Mzilikazi wa Afrika and Piet Rampedi about a SARS rogue unit and the Cato Manor police hit squad fresh in mind – stories that ruined reputations and destroyed lives – the dubious news of a South African woman giving birth to 10 babies hit the front page of a newspaper that has built a reputation of quality over more than a century, Pretoria News.
Unfortunately, the name Piet Rampedi surfaces again.
In 1981, Cooke won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize as a Washington Post reporter about an 8-year old heroin addict. Her story, "Jimmy's World", was fake news, his character a figment of Cooke's imagination. She was fired and the newspaper's editor, Ben Bradlee, under whose steady hand the Post exposed the depths of Nixon's Watergate half a decade before Cooke, returned the prize.
Twenty years later, Blair manufactured and plagiarised a host of stories that involved sources he had made up or pretended to have interviewed and was dismissed by The New York Times. His executive editor, Howell Raines, and managing editor, Gerald Boyd, also paid the price, losing their jobs because warnings about Blair were cast to the wind.
Story fabrications
In 2004, an experienced foreign correspondent for USA Today, Jack Kelley, was also dismissed after an investigation found he fabricated stories from all over the world over years, and, like Blair, was guilty of plagiarism. His editor, Karen Jurgensen, also resigned, accepting responsibility for her paper ignoring warning lights about Kelley.
Stephen Glass brought scandal to The New Republic where numerous fabricated stories were published, and he was caught out by senior editor Michael Kelly, aptly illustrated in the film Shattered Glass.
Ditto for Claas Relotius. The award-winning reporter pulled the wool for far too long over the eyes of the editors of Der Spiegel. He also created fictionalised characters in his reports and resigned in 2018.
These reporters all worked for what can generally be described as prestigious and high-quality news organisations.
Over the past week, the story about the decuplets' birth has unravelled.
What is clearly a case of a gullible editor and journalist and news organisation ignoring the basics of credible and trustworthy journalism, has become a huge embarrassment for South African journalism. That the news came directly from the editor's office and that his company bought into it and took on the financial cloak of good Samaritan looking after the interests of the mother and the alleged father of the decuplets, has become South Africa's own Cooke-Blair-Kelley-Glass-Relotiusgate.
The journalistic bottomless pit Rampedi has dug for himself and fallen into, destroying the meagre scraps of credibility Dr Iqbal Survé’s Independent Media has left (also because Survé became part of the elaborate scam), comes in the wake of the Satchwell Commission of Inquiry into South Africa's media ethics. The reasons for this mess are twofold:
A test of credibility
Firstly, Survé has taken his group out of the media ethical watchdog system of the South African Press Council, thereby emphasising that he does not regard an independent ombud system applicable to his newspapers' journalism. The internal ombud system he has instituted to replace the highly regarded Press Council's role of guarding over South Africa's printed media as an ethical watchdog, is yet to be proven as nothing more than an ensemble playing to the tune of His Master's voice, the Tembisa-10 coverage a serious test for its credibility.
Secondly, after those highly discredited journalists left the Sunday Times in shame and with their arrogant and flagrant flouting of the basics of journalism haunting our journalism for many years to come, Survé appointed them in very senior positions, with Rampedi even becoming editor of Pretoria News. The saga of journalistic damage he and Mzilikazi wa Afrika have perpetrated is brilliantly told by Anton Harber in his analysis, So, for the Record – Behind the Headlines in an Era of State Capture, published last year by Jonathan Ball. It should be compulsory reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist in South Africa.
How can journalism prevent this ruinous attack on its credibility and trustworthiness from within its own fold? Way back in 2007, I wrote a column as ombudsman of the Cape Town daily Die Burger, analysing studies that have investigated the reasons for the Cooke and Blair scandals and how journalism could and should address this.
Research by Maggie Jones Patterson and Steve Urbanski, two mass communication lecturers at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and published in Journalism Studies, investigated how the Washington Post and The New York Times could have prevented the Cooke and Blair cases. In "What Jayson Blair and Janet Cooke say about the press and the erosion of public trust", Patterson and Urbanski emphasised that "if newspapers do not consistently measure their decisions and actions against their mission as a public trust, their commitment to truth can become shrouded by less noble motives like ambition and the thrill of a scoop".
Elements of journalism
Patterson and Urbanski analysed the Cooke and Blair cases, considering three essential elements pointed out by the benchmark study of experienced editors, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect. These essential elements were also applicable in the cases of Jim Kelley, Stephen Glass and Claas Relotius and the way they manufactured news, becoming fraudsters, and are highly relevant to the Sunday Times and Pretoria News scoop debacles. The three elements are:
- that journalism's first duty is to serve the truth;
- that journalism's first loyalty is to the public; and
- that journalism's core discipline is one of verification of information.
Kovach and Rosenstiel emphasised in their book, in the age in which social media is becoming even more imperative, the mission of journalism:
In the age of social media, 14 years later, I want to re-emphasise what I wrote in Die Burger because the Rampedi-Survé fiasco has shown that we as journalists and publishers should learn the lessons from the past. It is a reminder of the words of the Spanish-American philosopher, George Santayana, published in 1905 in his book The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Patterson and Urbanski showed how the Washington Post and The New York Times failed in their handling of the Cooke and Blair cases: the editors did not act, despite early warnings, against them; the way anonymous sources were dealt with left much to be desired, and there was obvious neglect to eliminate fabrications and plagiarism.
The editors of both newspapers were repeatedly warned that Cooke and Blair were not following basic journalism best-practice and ethical protocols. The problems already arose at their appointments when their so-called qualifications were not verified and both had lied about them. The warnings of their direct heads were ignored. The same happened with Kelley at USA Today, as well as Relotius at Der Spiegel. And, one can emphasise, in the Independent Media Tembisa 10 scandal.
Patterson and Urbanski expressed severe criticism about the way Cooke and Blair were allowed to use anonymous sources. They quoted the experienced journalist and academic Jill Rosen, who warned in 2003 in the prestigious American Journalism Review that although "plenty of people have long felt that anonymity is overused, if not abused, it's only become a more popular reporting tool through the years".
Any lessons learnt?
Considering Harber's incisive analysis of the fallout after the Sunday Times fabrications and the report into media ethics by Judge Kathy Satchwell and her panel, one could well ask, has journalism not learnt any lessons?
The media have a responsibility towards the public and their shareholders. They have the right to demand that severe lapses in our profession are not swept under the carpet until they just happen again and again.
In South Africa, with its vulnerable democracy where journalists are constantly attacked and vilified by politicians and social media's "group madness", as Jon Ronson calls it in his book, So you have been publicly shamed, the public should demand that rogue journalists be removed from the profession. Just as they insist that corrupt politicians and others in public and private spheres be removed. When we, as editors in our own profession, point fingers at municipal managers, mayors, parliamentarians, ministers, crooked business people and the state capture scoundrels, we should not hesitate to look in the mirror and be accountable ourselves.
What is happening at Independent Media is tragic and intolerable, the devastation of all our profession stands for. It flies in the face of our accountability and responsibility to the public. We cannot sleepwalk like Lady Macbeth, shouting: "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" while rubbing our hands – and then just move on as if our profession is not undergoing serious bloodletting.
- George Claassen is News24's public editor and a board member of the international Organisation of New Ombudsmen and Standards Editors.
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