Local journalists, with their reliance on the official spokesperson, are failing to tell the real story of police violence, writes Jane Duncan.
Clearly, what happened is contested. So journalists should seek out witnesses. Too much journalism is an unthinking ritual of pursuing ‘objectivity’ Unless the media step up . . . police violence will continue and even intensify.
Last month, Nqobile Nzuza, 17, was shot dead by the police in a protest about housing and evictions in the Cato Crest informal settlement, Durban. Another person was shot and wounded. The protest was part of a series of road blockades organised by the shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.
The police maintain that they acted in self-defence. They say they were called to respond to a disturbance. A large crowd attacked two officers, stoning their vehicle and attempting to pull them from it. The officers shot at the crowd to prevent themselves from being killed.
Abahlali denies the police claims, stating that the police opened fire without provocation. Nzuza’s family said she was shot in the back, and the movement claimed that the second person was also shot from behind.
These details add considerable weight to the movement’s claims that both victims were fleeing at the time.
Yet most media reports gave prominence to the police account. Abahlali’s account received less prominence, but its spokesperson was apparently not on the scene at the time.
In addition to the police and Abahlali, media sources included the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, the government and Nzuza’s family.
Why is this seemingly balanced selection of sources a problem? Clearly, what happened on that fateful day is contested. So it stands to reason that journalists should seek out witnesses — rather than sticking to spokespersons — compare the competing versions of events and build up their own independent narratives. Yet, out of a sample of 17 articles, only two showed any attempt by journalists to speak to witnesses.
One of these was in the Daily Sun, a paper that has developed a reputation for being much more “on the ground” than most. It quoted an unnamed witness as saying the police blocked the protesters’ route, ran after them and shot at them as they were running away.
Yet, even in these stories, there was no evidence of journalists having gone to the scene and looked for stones, broken glass or any other evidence that tested the police’s account.
This should have been eminently possible for the Durban-based papers, yet they were the most prone to parroting the spokespersons.
This is not the first incidence of paper-thin reporting on police violence.
Although much of the reporting on the Marikana massacre was excellent, there was also a significant but underacknowledged editorial failure in the early coverage that led to the full extent of the police violence not being reported.
As in Cato Crest, journalists largely failed to interview witnesses, relying instead on spokespersons who were not witnesses to the full extent of the horror. A simple inspection of the scene would have revealed a second site, away from the initial shootings, dotted with forensic markings, and suggesting that the killings were much more extensive than initially reported.
Journalists often complain about a lack of resources for investigation, and justifiably so, but all that was needed in the Marikana case were feet, eyes and at least some ability to decode a crime scene.
Then there was the killing of Andries Tatane, which resulted in several police officers being acquitted for lack of evidence. The judge ruled that the officers responsible could not be identified because their faces were obscured by their helmets.
In July, Channel 4 in the UK flighted a documentary on police violence by conflict journalist Inigo Gilmore, who claimed he had footage showing the faces of the policemen responsible for the killings.
Yet there is scant evidence of any attempts to assess these claims. If his claims had weight, then surely the media should have run stories identifying the culprits. But no such stories were forthcoming and, as a result, the Tatane killing remains unresolved. Presumably his killers continue to “serve and protect”.
South African journalists largely failed to report on cellphone footage taken by a tactical response team member in Marikana, capturing a policeman boasting about whom he had shot. Then the footage was picked up by Channel 4. City Press had posted the footage on its website several months before the Channel 4 story broke but failed to make a story of it.
The police argument that they acted in self-defence at Marikana continues to unravel at the Farlam commission. Furthermore, in Durban, several cases involving accusations of police violence against Abahlali members have been thrown out of court for lack of evidence. In dismissing murder charges against its members in 2011, the judge accused the state’s witnesses of being dishonest and unreliable.
These incidents should have made journalists even more committed to probing the veracity of the police account in Cato Crest. Yet there is little evidence of this having happened, suggesting that the lessons of previous editorial failures have not been acknowledged, never mind learnt.
Too much journalism is an unthinking ritual of pursuing “objectivity” and seeking “balance” to achieve this. But, in practice, this translates into phoning the spokespersons on both sides of a particular conflict and reporting what they say. The journalistic duty has supposedly been discharged once the story has been “balanced” in this way.
This ritual leads to journalists not wanting to take sides on matters of considerable public importance, when they really need to. “Balance” means that they do not have to go out on a limb and assess who is right and who is wrong, or whether the viewpoints being presented are just or unjust.
In the case of police violence, “balance” is being used as an excuse to avoid investigation and even independent thinking. Spokesperson-driven journalism favours resource-rich organisations which can afford to maintain a constant flow of information to the media. In other words, “balance” is becoming an obstacle to good journalism, rather than a road towards it.
South African journalism has considerable investigative capacity. That is one of its main strengths. But trends (albeit uneven) have emerged in how this capacity is being put to use. Those stories that focus on the misdeeds of the political elites in the security cluster seem to receive a great deal of attention — the Richard Mdluli story comes to mind.
Granted, these elites should come in for considerable scrutiny, as their (mis)deeds set the stage for abuses further down the chain of command. But security-cluster misconduct that occurs at the point of conflict with the working class and unemployed is subject to less probing.
This trend reproduces and reinforces broader media and social inequalities. Two decades into democracy, South African media still constitute an elite public sphere.
Consider, for instance, the number of business publications and business journalists relative to the number of labour voices. The unemployed have practically no voice in the media, except as social problems (such as violent protesters) or victims. Women and young people continue to be marginalised.
This means that media discourses come to us already inherently unbalanced. Nothing short of a commitment to social justice and to affirming society’s most marginalised voices will correct this imbalance.
This should not mean automatically portraying protesters as saints and the state as sinners. But it should mean going out of one’s way to tell stories that those in positions of authority would prefer to remain buried. It also means recognising that those who are not in a position of authority are more likely to be bearers of these stories, and seeking them out.
It means looking beyond the official spin about protesters who blockade roads as being inherently criminal and untrustworthy.
It must be recognised that these Abahlali blockades are acts of desperation staged when all else has failed — including court interdicts to prevent evictions — and in the face of assassinations of two outspoken movement activists.
No rational person wants to be arrested, shot or killed. Yet, as the movement’s S’bu Zikode has explained: “When all else fails you, including the law, there is still amandla.”
In view of these structured biases towards the powerful, journalistic objectivity, as applied to stories about police violence, fails to unsettle at best and, at worst, reinforces these biases. It does little to give voice, much less agency, to those worst affected by the problem.
Perhaps it is unfair to expect journalists to compensate for ineffective investigatory and politically compromised prosecutorial state agencies.
They are in an extremely stressful profession, not made any easier by declining circulation, cost-cutting and growing pressures on media freedom. Furthermore, the conflict-reporting skills that existed in some newsrooms in the ’80s and ’90s are in short supply now.
But unless the media step up and commit more investigative capacity to the problem of police violence, it will continue and even intensify.
Journalism that refuses to take sides in the face of injustice, using false notions of balance as the pretext, will do little to prevent a possible descent into a quasi-police state.
And this descent will have devastating consequences for us all, including journalists.
Caption: CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS: Police officers were charged with killing Andries Tatane, left, but a judge acquitted them.
By Jane Duncan
Duncan is the Highway Africa chair of media and information society at Rhodes University
Article Source: Sunday Times