The harassment of e.tv journalists to produce the criminals who were part of their exposé is a direct result of the knee-jerk reaction that our crime fighting strategy has become in South Africa. Someone must have briefed the government security cluster and said that rough street justice is going to win the day. I am a consistent follower of a police series on international television where police torture suspects spy on civil society and generally apply Wild West tendencies to resolve crime.
Given the socialite nature of our top cops, I suspect that, like me, they do go to movies. The difference is some us know that a gung-ho approach frankly only works at the box office. In real life there is a Constitution that protects the rights of those that we may not like. But I digress.
Speaking on the e.tv’s Justice Factor programme this past weekend, Sanef representative Thabo Leshilo was very clear that the right of journalists to protect their sources is sacrosanct and that what they do with that freedom is up to them. In the same programme, Professor Tawan Kupe from Wits University asked a pointed question: at what point does a source lose the right to be protected? Given this dichotomy, let me then ask: can e.tv really do something that amounts to harbouring criminals and giving them a platform to threaten the country in the name of protecting their sources? Shouldn’t e.tv hand these criminals over to the police in the same way that they expose government corruption and lead the police to arrest people who are stealing money from public coffers? Shouldn’t there be collaboration between the police and civil society to make our country safer? Let me dare suggest that if this criminal threatened e.tv staff and started shooting and killing the television crew, the management would not sustain the argument that they must be protected? They would be the first to lay charges and produce all the evidence to back their charge. Because the danger they pose is not apparently imminent, it seems to me that we can argue over the luxury of protecting these criminals as sources at all costs. I can understand the protection of those that led e.tv to the criminals, but I am battling with the protection of the gun-toting criminals themselves. e.tv should have been at the forefront of handing these people over to the police so that in the future they know they can’t advertise their evil deeds and threaten the country. But I do not have all the answers. The courts will shed light on this further in the coming days.
This storyline is the dilemma that should face all South Africans about the responsibilities that come with whatever freedoms we exercise. Unfortunately, freedom is not free. There are certain responsibilities that can be too heavy to bear for everyone. It is important in a democracy that freedom of the press is guaranteed. The press should be able to serve as an estate of checks and balances. If this estate is destroyed by a gung-ho attitude towards the resolution of crime, how are people supposed to come forward with evidence that will help track down the law breakers?
As we run ahead of ourselves thinking about a quick fix to tracking down the apparently easy-to-catch criminal, we need to ask ourselves how, in the bigger scheme of things, are we going to dismantle the syndicates of crime and corruption if we dislodge the cloak of anonymity? How are we going to protect those who blow the whistle? In the recent past, how many cash-in-transit robberies have been foiled due to a tip-off to the police? Imagine if those that give a tip-off were made to appear in court?
Now, back to the movie house. The American television series glorifies the witness-protection services and the way the attorneys negotiate all kinds of plea bargains for hard-core criminals to be used as bait to catch the syndicate leaders. This seems like something reasonable to learn from there — the importance of using access to the law to catch the bigger fish and not to persecute those like journalists — who can in future become part of the arsenal to fight crime.
Is it possible to find a balance? Would it have been difficult for the police to have quietly gone to meet with e.tv managers to find an amicable way out of this without resorting to laws that should probably have been repealed by now. Should the police make enemies of the very press they may need in future for information? Or should they be attempting to turn them into allies to help defeat the criminal paradise that we are becoming?
The only reason we are busy debating this instead of receiving news of further arrests of criminals is perhaps because of the new way of fighting crime in South Africa — political grandstanding and using fear tactics as a panacea for all crime problems. Maybe the people who are perpetrators are not even watching the news bulletin where these supposed threats are being made, which defeats the strategy of striking fear into the hearts of criminals.
When all is said and done, we need to make the Constitution work for all of us in making our country a safe place to live and work. Let cool heads prevail in the resolution of this dilemma — there are no easy gung ho or purist answers to a complex problem of defeating crime in our society.
Let us first answer this question and then others will follow: Shouldn’t e.tv hand these criminals over to the police in the same way that they expose government corruption and lead the police to arrest people who are stealing money from public coffers
Etv’s smear tactic only makes sense if you look at the bigger picture.
SA has been suffering from crime since for the last decade. Why the sudden “concern” for tourists from etv? So its not a question of defeating crime but a question of how to prevent these destructive smear campaign reminiscent of the old apartheid regime.
Our free speech rights are at risk by destructive attempts to spear the 2010 WC by whipping up hysteria locally and internationally with these recent HOAXES that appeared in HEADLINES in the SA media within the span of a SINGLE week:
- “vests that prevent stab wounds” being marketed to international visitors
- etv’s concocted interviews of potential criminals ready to assault tourists during the 2010 WC
- an overseas journalist “Sophie Bullion” allegedly being “brutalized” by local police when in reality there was NO overseas coverage of this sensationalized incident!
Even Fifa is unfortunately FORCED to impose controls on journalists covering the event, probably for the first time in Fifa’s history since in the only world cups where the hosts country’s OWN citizens are seeking to smear its own event!!!
ETV don’t hand over government apparatchiks who merely THREATEN to commit crimes without them having done something wrong yet. They hold back until the crime is done before blowing the whistle.
The cops don’t act on threats by government agents either. Malema wasn’t charged, or even called in for questioning, with his unambiguous and open threat to “kill for Zuma”.
So, where’s the urgency to reveal your sources? The cops have one of the two ETV threatener hoodlums in their custody already, but he hasn’t even been charged yet, some two weeks later. What do they plan to do with their captive and his accomplice? Do they even HAVE a plan? Can they make ANY charges stick?
So, assuming ETV turned in both those hoodlums and forever compromised their undertaking to all their sources in keeping a secret, what would have been gained by the country as a whole?
We’d have a news medium that isn’t trusted and we’d have a police force who cannot or will not prosecute the very people they’ve been handed on a platter.
Sounds like a lose-lose situation to me.
I feel that the ETV expose was intended to show what was smouldering in the background. If there are only 2 ‘criminals’, ‘suspects’ planning this assault then it would be great for ETV to hand them over
BUT
the two are maybe part of 2,000 or 20,000 who are planning the same thing. Kill the messengers and let the other criminals continue with their plans? How short sighted can we be? ETV have let out a warning load and clear and now we want them to pay the price?? Soft targets are on their way to South Africa and any self respecting crook would rather have his options open – the easy targets or the fortified offices and housing complexes. The choice is simple.
Protect the criminals wherever they are because you may end up in court if you expose them!
Sounds like good police policy to me and whilst we are about it lets close down the crime line too, as the ‘whistle-blowers’ are in danger of being caught up in a net that they would rather stay away from.
A counter question – shouldn’t ALL criminals, especially those in government/public service be dealt with first – tried, convicted without favours from ‘powerful friends’ and their assets seized so that a clear message is sent out that NOBODY is above the law?
e.tv interviewed people who stated their intention to commit crimes in the future. Innocent until proven guilty?
I am more concerned that someone felt secure in blowing the whistle to e.TV and not the police. Perhaps this should be investigated further?
I am a blackman. I used to be extremely uncomfortable with the public view punted by eTV and Deborah Putter that my blackness means that I am a potential rapist and criminal. Now I dont care anymore. Racial stereotyping cannot pass off for investigative journalism. Owning the media and the capital is no licence to denigrate others and magnify your private fears in the public space!
Try the same stunt in the USA and interview potential Al Queda operatives who intend to bomb and kill innocent people and see how the world’s oldest “democracy” will handle the matter.
You cannot win my support by always harping on the criminal and racist prejudicial mantra. Life teaches that there is no one blackman’s profile out there: criminal and dangerous! Imagine a media where we would everyday showcase racist white people and their crimes!
Now the topsy turvy politics have left us defending criminals who threaten mayhem and rampant violence during 2010 soccer world cup.
There is something pathologically base and pathetic with all those who gloat at dragging South Africa’s reputation in the mud whatever the cost for an alleged future possible criminal act. Frankly they need help, there is some kind of spiritual dearth and amoral pleasure in seeking out criminals of that nature and giving them air play. If anything they could have been bought just to make the kind of threats they did. And only a court of law could clear that once and for all.
Suppose I work as a journalist for eTV. And some black guys make contact and claim they are the group of faceless black people who always kill innocent white farmers.
I wouldnt hesitate where my moral compass and loyalties lie here. I would go ahead with the interview tip off the Police Serious Violent Crime Intelligence Unit and let them participate in the interview and get to the bottom of this evil scourge in our country.
I would only publish the interview after the police have got to the bottom of this matter, arrested all the king pins of the farm murders .. with the sequel from the police showing the arrests made and linking of the criminals to other unsolved farm murder crimes.
Journalism is not an absolute, disoriented and decontextualised profession churning out fear and threats. It’s a thinking profession and journailsts are members of the public first and also victims of crime.
Why should a criminal be given airplay on prime time viewing TV to give “future” threats like that? In the context of the greater crime picture in South Africa is it really responsible to flight an interview like that?
When Jews were in Babylon, they were admonished by Jeremiah to pray for the peace of Babylon so that one day they can survive and go home.
eTV management and especially Deborah Putter need the same serious admonishing. if South Africa sinks it will sink for all of us. Unless of course you have a dual citizenship.
My brother, re-study your work, you will realize that you are a hopeless but typical reactionary to the core. Your reckless conclusion that “media freedom is sancrosant”, particularly in a society like ours frankly borders on hypocricy and ignorance of a highest order. Your lebelling of our country’s crime fighting strategy as “gung-ho attitude”, “fear tactic”, “political grandstanding” further put your objectivity at test. Now that you are confused as usual, note that when our Deputy Minister of Police Mr. Mbalula refused to mingle with a notorious “criminal” Skeem GP at Kodwa’s party and chase him away, he was following the same logic you are trying hard to subvert, “a friend of criminal is also by way of implication, a criminal”. So when you are expected to surrender you senses to this logic, you leave up to court to decide – what a convinience excuse
Professor Tawan Kupe actually offered the answer to the question he posed. He is of the view, and I tend to agree with him, that the source loses the protection when such protection is abused. From the content of the interview, it is quite clear that the two men sought to abuse the protection offered to them. Nevertheless, e-tv was wrong to afford them the protection in the first place. They were bragging about their criminal exploits and promising to commit some more. The questions that beg the answers are; if one is privy to a planned criminal activity, is it ok not to report it to the police since 20 000 others are probably planning some or other criminal activity in any event? Does the duty to report crime apply to everyone else except journalists and the media in general?
Frankly, I find it difficult to justify e-tv’s airing of the documentary and the subsequent reluctance to disclose their sources.
I still don’t understand what part of that broadcast was ‘news’. Nothing notable had happened. We are all aware of the possibilities and probabilities the World Cup is likely to attract. We were given a reminder. Whether a good or bad idea, it was simply a reminder. Whether the interviewees are actually hardened criminals would normally still be a matter of debate. That there is no debate, suggests that the entire country believes that they were; a mark ‘for’ etv’s credibility. That someone supposedly committed suicide points to the fact that the interviewees really are hardened criminals. I notice no one wonders whether the suicide was genuine. Perhaps the go-between was forced to kill himself by the hardened criminals.
As a humble man who has witnessed some of the fire of academic debate, I have a simple suggestion to make here. While we can delve into a purely academic/constitutional discussion regarding the nature of journalistic ethics will distance us from the central questions: why these journalists? why these criminals? The answer to the first question is obvious: these journalists (and the television programme that employs them) have produced content that suggests that the government is incapable of providing a safe environment for foreigners to visit South Africa during the World Cup. The answer to the second is a question of examples. The government wishes to make an example of these criminals as their conduct is embarrassing to the state. Should the journalists be able to do this? Should the criminals? We would deal with these simple questions, not get bogged down in complicated arguments.