ANTON HARBER: Editors face difficult calls in the rush to publish

Few stories have so clearly illustrated the difficult role of editors under current pressures as the handling of the “De Ruyter allegations”. 

The current war cry of editors, or at least those with some sense of ethical purpose, is “Verification, verification, verification — we do not publish until we are sure.” With so much unfiltered disinformation floating around, journalists and news outlets have to show their value and build credibility by ensuring their work is reliable. At the same time, the speed of news is accelerating and journalists have to react when serious claims are running rampant on social media. 

But verification is neither simple nor straightforward, and those who claim it is are pretenders. We may decide we have enough sources of information to verify something ... until new data emerges that calls it into question. Even in hard science we accept something as true when a preponderance of scientists accept it, though there might still be doubters. 

In reality, editors face a number of close and difficult calls and, under pressure to keep up with the furious pace of social media, are susceptible to misjudgements. If they only published or broadcast when they were 100% sure, many important stories would not get out, because there is almost always some level of uncertainty. 

In general, our investigative reporters have done well on the Eskom story, systematically exposing the stupefying levels of corruption in the troubled state enterprise. But they have had to wade through many allegations, counter-allegations and attempts to mislead them, particularly from former Eskom personnel with self-serving agendas. It is a risky story with much at stake.

News24 published the so-called Eskom Files in 2022 after receiving “a vast trove of documents ... [including] thousands of internal Eskom memoranda, communications, Excel spreadsheets, contracts and project management documents”. Its journalists spent three months checking out the documents and augmenting them with information from their own sources.

It was a thorough job that revealed the vast extraction operations that were bankrupting the state enterprise and has led to some of those involved being charged. It was a model of thorough investigative work. 

Other journalists received the same documents but were unable to do the hard work on them before News24 broke the story. They let it go rather than rush into print under uncertain conditions, thus losing a potential scoop in the interests of verification. 

When former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said a few weeks ago on live television that two senior cabinet ministers were implicated in the corruption at Eskom it was immediately picked up by all the media. A figure was making serious allegations and it was undoubtedly newsworthy. 

Few outlets did what they now probably wish they had done: point out that De Ruyter gave no details and provided no evidence, just throwing the information out in the knowledge that the media would feast on it. The story was irresistible as it fitted the narrative of state corruption and failure and was piled on top of a whole lot of credible and substantial evidence. 

But that was only one narrative. It was striking how racialised the reaction was, with many black radio callers and print commentators echoing former president Thabo Mbeki’s view that De Ruyter had revealed himself as “the classical extreme right-wing anti-communist fanatic of the apartheid years”.

Some of the media plunged in and named the two ministers, even linking them to an alleged attempt to poison De Ruyter. An elaborate picture was drawn of five criminal cartels controlling Eskom and linked to these ministers. The information was credited to an off-the-book investigation commissioned by De Ruyter, paid for by private business and executed by the security firm of former police commissioner George Fivaz, now leaked to the media.  

But the Fivaz report unravelled quickly. One of SA’s most experienced investigative reporters, Jacques Pauw, had been telling everyone he could for some time that there was no evidence to back the report. Last week he revealed that the investigator behind it was Tony Oosthuizen, a former apartheid killer and unrehabilitated racist of little credibility. The report, Pauw wrote, “contained no facts” and was full of “wild and untested allegations”. This was embarrassing for those editors who had conveyed the details without warning that they could not be taken at face value. 

News24 did something unusual: it wrote an editorial boasting about a story it had not written. It had not carried the De Ruyter/Fivaz material because it lacked evidence. It had gone with the earlier Eskom Files because that was documented and verifiable. This report was not. But City Press and Rapport, both part of the Media24 stable, did run with it, and their stories appeared on their group site. 

The Daily Maverick, known for its investigative work, produced a dramatic piece attributed to “intelligence reports”. The organigram of these cartels was the size of a boardroom table, it wrote, and “from that moment on [of seeing them], the country we thought we lived in would be an entirely different place”.

It used words like “persuasive” and “revealed”, and phrases like “this squared with the intelligence we received” to indicate plausibility. Deep into the story it said the minister was not being named because he couldn’t be conclusively implicated and the publication would prefer “to wait for the bank statements and purchase orders [ie the evidence] that settled the matter”. 

That’s the editor’s dilemma. It seems like important information that needs to be shared and analysed, it fits with previous information, and it seems to add new layers. Everybody wants all the allegations out in the public space, not hidden in reporters’ notebooks. Sometimes these allegations are best tested when thrown out for public scrutiny. But what of the pledge to verify first? Notably, Daily Maverick never published part two of its exposé and has left part one up without any disclaimer. 

Another recent example was when controversial anti-immigrant campaigner Nhlanhla “Lux” Dhlamini claimed his Soweto house had been bombed by the EFF. When Dhlamini’s claims turned out to be dubious, broadcaster Redi Tlhabi — who has become something of a Twitter vigilante of bad journalism — lambasted those who ran his claims without verification. But if there are reports of bombs circulating on social media on a day of tension and uncertainty, the media has to deal with them. And sometimes verification takes time. 

In both the De Ruyter and Dhlamini cases putting out the story led to it being scrutinised and the person called to account for their claims. We don’t want editors to keep consequential stories from the public, but it would help if journalists slowed down, took a deep breath and checked the details before rushing onto air or into print. Most of all, they should think about how to frame the story: if it is not verified, make that clear. Signal unequivocally to the public that these are no more than claims from a prominent figure, worth hearing but not yet worth believing. 

• Harber is Caxton professor of journalism at Wits University and executive director of the Campaign for Free Expression.