Was dismissed Cape Times editor Alide Dasnois a vessel of bravery? Sanef has said so, but it has risked its integrity in doing this, writes Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.
Pretoria - A few weeks ago I asked on my Facebook page that the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) explain how it had arrived at the conclusion that former Cape Times editor Alide Dasnois was a worthy recipient of the 2014 Nat Nakasa Courageous Journalism Award.
I put the argument on my social media wall to avoid the expected accusation that I was using my newspaper to attack my Sanef colleagues, trying to question Dasnois’s stature as a journalist or worse still, impress my bosses.
One of the lessons I have learnt in the many years of opinion and column writing is to never justify myself.
The logic of my argument – and not my motives – must speak for itself.
Noble intentions can never improve a bad argument just like impure motives will not wash down a solid thought.
As Thando Mnqolozana wrote in his latest book Unimportance, “it is not the consequences of truth telling that matters, it is the act itself”.
So take this argument as you will.
In the same way that we in the media and the public correctly demand that the SABC board and Communications Minister Faith Muthambi account for how they came to confirm Hlaudi Motsoeneng as chief operations officer, so must Sanef when acting in the public domain and about the name of a South African icon that Nakasa is.
Yes, the SABC is a public entity paid for by our taxes, but the principle of accountability must count for something since the media purports to do what it does in the public interest.
Unlike Motsoeneng’s situation, the Independent Newspapers-Dasnois situation is not as cut and dried. There are two contesting versions on the table.
The company’s version is that Dasnois had committed an error of judgment by not making the story of Nelson Mandela’s death the paper’s lead story.
Her version is that she was fired because instead of leading with Mandela’s death, she went with a story in which the public protector criticised then minister of agriculture Tina Joemat-Pettersson’s role in the awarding of an R800 million tender to manage the state’s fishery vessels to Independent Newspapers boss Dr Iqbal Survé’s Sekunjalo consortium.
Both parties confirm she was offered a different position within the company. The matter is now before an industry arbitration process.
So regardless of which of the two versions you believe is true, the jury is still out.
It is therefore at best too early for Sanef to have objectively made the decision that Dasnois was a victim of corporate bullying as it is to say she was not.
In that regard, one must wonder why Sanef would gamble its integrity on the outcome of this case, especially a few months after it had to withdraw a statement it had made protesting against the acquisition of the group by its present owners? Why would Sanef unnecessarily entangle itself in an unresolved employer-employee dispute?
In case the answer is that editors are its business, why then was Sanef not similarly concerned when the new owners of Times Media decided against the continued employment of or resignations of several editors including Mondli Makhanya, Fred Khumalo, Pearl Sebolao and Barney Mthombothi?
Sanef was not short of uncontroversial candidates who had demonstrated unquestionable acts of journalistic courage. At the time that Sanef made the decision, Swaziland paper The Nation’s Bheki Makhubo was serving his umpteenth stint in that country’s prisons as was Zimbabwean Edmund Kudzayi of the Sunday Mail whose crime was calling Robert Mugabe a dictator.
Those to me are unquestionable acts of courageous journalism because both men knew there would be consequences.
I cannot see why acts of journalistic bravery should be limited to those who practise their courageous journalism in South Africa.
If Sanef thought the Sekunjalo story was such a remarkable act of courage, why not also honour those who wrote it. Like Dasnois, they too would have shown courage to write unflatteringly about their employer.
I have argued before that it is as important to guard against media owners stifling editors as it is for editors and newsroom managers to defend the media freedom of the “small” men and women who work under us.
Sanef’s failure or reluctance to account for how it arrives at some of its decisions makes it susceptible to becoming a vehicle of those who have agendas that at face value have nothing to do with its core business.
If editors want media that reflects a free, robust and reflective society founded on integrity and accountability, it should start with itself.
We must be able to see the log in our own eye before we see splinters in everyone else’s.
If this does nothing else, it will hopefully inspire newsrooms under our leaderships that they are led by men and women whose commitment to journalistic independence, critical engagement and an open society are matters of principle not a flavour of a season preoccupation.
* Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya is an executive editor at the Pretoria News. Follow him on Twitter @fikelelom
Pretoria News