Publication	Business Day
Date	2005-11-16
Reporter	Anton Harber
Web Link	www.bday.co.za

It is a journalist’s nightmare and a media critic’s dream: one day in one city, two major newspapers interviewed the same people about the same things *1 and came out with entirely different stories.

One said that a rape had been alleged, reported and was being investigated; the other, to put it plainly, said no rape was reported, investigated or even alleged.

The story made front page lead in both papers, because the “accused” was Jacob Zuma, former deputy president and current presidential candidate. The papers involved were, of course, the Sunday Times and the Sunday Independent.

Both broke a fundamental rule not to name an accused before the person has been charged in court. The Times would probably argue that public interest outweighed this rule because of Zuma’s prominence ­ but I would be guessing this because it is not something they chose to explain.

The Sunday Independent would probably argue that there is no harm done in identifying someone who, they say, was not being accused. But, of course, the story appeared because he was being accused, if only by the Sunday Times. Their justification reminds one of the classic “I didn’t beat my wife” headline about someone who has never been accused of beating his wife.

The Sunday Times declined to name the alleged victim, respecting that rule at least. The Independent named her in the context of saying she was not a victim. I suspect she quickly became one, whether or not there was a rape. City Press chose not to mention the story at all.

To ask which of them got it right is difficult. It is possible, if slightly ludicrous, that they all did, because they were all fed different stories.

I find it hard to believe that the Sunday Times was simply reckless. Their internal checks and balances are known to be rigorous, so I suspect they got something they had reason to believe was confirmation. If not, the job of editor Mondli Makhanya would be on the line for being careless with such a major and inflammatory story. He said the following day that “the story was subjected to the Sunday Times’s strictest tests and it would not have seen the light of day if we had the slightest doubt about the existence of the investigation”.

Note that he is not trying to argue that the report of a rape allegation was true, but that he and his paper had followed their rules of evidence to ascertain if it was. And he shifts the issue from one of whether a rape occurred, to whether there is a police investigation under way.

The other two papers came up with different facts. One chose to run with a denial; the other ignored the whole thing. Neither position is an easy one: the Independent relayed a damaging accusation that they themselves said was baseless; City Press did not cover the story of the day, something no news media ever wants to do *2.

It is almost certain that the allegation ­ true or not ­ was spread as part of the propaganda war between ANC factions *3. We know that there are dirty tricks being played, as evidenced by the hoax e-mails that have been flying around. We know that intelligence experts ­ usually also dab hands at disinformation ­ are playing for both teams.

This is the real angle all the papers missed. Where do these allegations come from? Why and how are they being spread so systematically? Who stands to gain from them? Who is up to dirty information tricks? The story that will matter in the long run is how the story became a story.

Before one rushes to criticise the Sunday Times, one needs to ask this question: if a charge of rape was laid against the deputy president of the ANC, would newspapers not have failed in their duty if they buried such an important story? Is it not something we must know?

I am less concerned that the Sunday Times ran a story than the way they did it. They failed to put it in the context of a bitter war of allegation and counterallegation and to warn that any claims, charges or accusations must be treated with scepticism.

They ­ and most of the media ­ have not yet done what needs to be done: to probe beneath the surface of the rape allegation to find out who is fighting this dirty war and how far are they prepared to go.

• Harber is Caxton Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand.

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*1It is very unlikely, indeed nigh impossible, that these two people interviewed the precise same set of people.

*2This because City Press publishes on the Saturday. The Sunday Times and Sunday Argus were fed their fresh information on the Saturday, although most of the daily newspapers had been forewarned on the upcoming story on Wednesday, but would not publish as a case had not been opened.

It should be clear that whoever briefed the Sunday Times, knew what was going on and was representing a perspective opposite to whosoever briefed the Sunday Argus.

*3This is absolutely true, but only in respect of the timing of the revelations.