If it is any comfort to the editor of the Sunday Times, Mondli Makhanya, he should read the chapter in Joel Mervis's book, The Fourth Estate, on How to Torment an Editor. Mervis was editor of the newspaper from 1959 to 1975, transforming it into the most widely read and powerful weekly in South Africa.
The basic formula was to turn "dull" political events into headline stories, cast the news net as widely as possible, and balance the serious stuff with a steamy back page. Among Mervis's qualities were two in particular: he was a qualified barrister whose radar picked up possible defamation in a reporter's throwaway lines long before the reporter himself even suspected it, and he had courage - a steely, extraordinary courage.
I worked under Joel (as an associate/political editor) for 16 years, and I remember clearly those nasty duels with thuggish cabinet ministers and officials and with litigious crooks. Joel was the rock in the office. He steadied us just with his demeanour. There were other tormentors, too.
As the admirable Laurence Gandar discovered when he was liberalising the Rand Daily Mail, rearguard actions had to be fought against the newspaper's own board and its advertising and circulation departments, who protested that all that liberal stuff antagonised many white readers, cut down advertising and readership, and heightened the pressures the government was applying on the newspaper. Joel had similar running wars with the newspaper's board, particularly when we started to dismantle the decaying United Party.
Finally, Gandar was fired; but fortunately the board was so dumb that they replaced him successively with journalists from the same mould - Raymond Louw, Allister Sparks, Rex Gibson. Louw was fired, then Sparks, and eventually the RDM under Gibson was closed down by its owners Anglo American.
The man who did the deed was Harry Oppenheimer's ex-son-in-law Gordon Waddell. He later left Anglo American, and returned briefly to confess that if there was one episode in his Anglo career of which he was ashamed, it was the RDM's closure. The point - and those who might sit in judgment on Makhanya might note it - is that in these newspaper flare-ups, often there are wheels within wheels.
As Makhanya grapples with the Sunday Times's present problems, he should remind himself that torment comes with the job, certainly if the editor pursues a strong ethical course, as he does.
In his case, however, some of the damage to the paper seems to have been self-inflicted, which explains why the Sunday Times for the present is like a disturbed ant's nest. No doubt Makhanya has read Mervis's entire book, because the things that torment editors cannot be condensed into a single chapter. Mae West once said that growing old was not for sissies. Equally, it can be said that editing a newspaper in South Africa (under apartheid or the ANC) is not for sissies. Mervis was no sissie, and nor is Makhanya.
On August 24, under the sub-headline "Cabinet not told deal included ocean area up to Robben Island," the Sunday Times reported that Transet had "secretly sold prime Cape Town coastal land and a vast sea area when it offloaded the V&A Waterfront for R7 billion to investors from London and Dubai." The use of the word "secretly" is dubious, and the allegation about the "vast sea area" sell-off was wrong. Transnet said the report was "false, misleading, irresponsible and defamatory."
The Sunday Times at first stood by its story, and then retracted it and published a front-page apology.
Makhanya says the newspaper now is "commissioning a panel of eminent individuals who will help us through this process." Much will depend on the composition of the panel: they can show much wisdom, or they can waft in, suggest the dismissal of key figures, and withdraw having pushed the newspaper into even deeper trouble. The first move by the panel seems to be pretty clear: to separate the self-inflicted damage caused by the report from the wider scene. And not to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Makhanya is approaching the inquiry in a commendably upfront way.
There is every reason to believe that he and his staff and advisers can undo the self-inflicted damage. For him or the reporter to be made casualties of the affair would further damage the Sunday Times - Makhanya has proved to be a top rate editor, just the kind the country needs, and the reporter's reputation, one gathers, is solid.
I'm thinking how Mervis would have handled the situation. He would have tackled the report itself first: making sure that the reporter reflected accurately what his informant(s) told him.
Then he would have proceeded to dissect the calibre of the informant(s): did he have a personal axe to grind, or was he nudged by interested parties into leaking a skewed report? It is possible the reporter or the informant(s) did not understand the concept of a "sea area" - that rights to sell "sea areas" might have been navigation rights. One hears that one informant at least was "lightweight."
Criticism might be deserved of the Sunday Time's immediate response to stand by its story, and only later to make a full apology. Professor Anton Harber makes this point clearly, and so does another commentator, Chris Moerdyk. It could be argued that at least the paper should have published a holding story, informing its readers that the report had been seriously challenged and that it was pursuing the complaint. Every newspaper at one time or another publishes inaccurate reports, and has to eat humble pie.
But when an incorrect report refers to what even vaguely might be seen as "political," the reaction (spurred on by politicians and their (financial?) dependants, acquires a new dimension. There is a suggestion that BEE interests resented the sale of the Waterfront and a "sea area" to a Dubai-UK company. Also, that left-wing anti-privatisation groups in the ANC similarly were resentful, even though the Dubai company is massive, hugely diversified around the world (harbours and ports, airlines, sea cruises, etc) - just the sort of foreign investment South Africa needs.
Attention will have to be given, too, to the Integrated Coastal Management Bill, and its implications for the Transnet dispute, the Waterfront generally, and for the ambitions of Coega at Port Elizabeth. Somehow, a tangled web has been woven into the whole "sea area" report.
The intrusion of "politics" cuts both ways. The arms scandal has spread the poison of corruption throughout the country, and possibly there is a tendency in newspapers to accept tip-offs about dodgy deals as genuine before proceeding to verify or dismiss them. Further, the Sunday Times has been on a roll: front-page stories about the Health Minister and about President Thabo Mbeki and the arms scandal - and no real rebuttal. The report on Mbeki was as hard-hitting as it is possible for a newspaper report to be, and if it was untrue Makhanya could have expected a writ on his desk the next morning. Instead, all Mbeki cared to say was - it is not true. Was it in the flush of successes that the Sunday Times dropped its guard?
Mervis, I'm pretty sure, would have stripped this aspect to the bone.
But then there is also the claim that the Sunday Times's claimed circulation of 500,000 does not take special deals into account; that the newspaper has talented journalists, but not enough of them; and that by creating The Times it over-reached itself, and is incurring significant losses. Have the editorial staff been pushed beyond their optimum reach? In the case of the RDM, finances and politics combined to put it out of business.
An advisory panel could offer invaluable advice here, but essentially this could be resolved as an in-house matter, within Makhanya's purview. The dangerous factor is that the Sunday Times's political enemies (and they are many) could use this moment to strike at a formidable foe. This is why detaching one aspect of the matter from another, and putting each in its proper perspective, could well be the wise way to resolve what is a very serious problem, both for the newspaper and, politically, for the country.
Click here to sign up to Politicsweb-by-email
