The recent controversy about an e.tv story featuring two criminals who threatened robbery and violence during the 2010 World Cup, has raised once again the controversial issue of whether journalists should have a right to protect their confi dential sources of information.
The recent controversy about an e.tv story featuring two criminals who threatened robbery and violence during the 2010 World Cup, has raised once again the controversial issue of whether journalists should have a right to protect their confi dential sources of information.
The journalists responsible for the story have been issued with subpoenas in terms of Section 205 of the
Criminal Procedures Act. For many years, media freedom advocates have argued for an amendment to this provision to recognise that journalists have an ethical obligation to protect their sources of information.
Police Commissioner Bheki Cele and Police Minister Nathi Mthetwa both responded with outrage to the
programme, saying that it was sensationalist and irresponsible.
Cele has labelled e.tv “a crime kisser” and has made ominous comments about the station having “an agenda”.
The African National Congress (ANC) has called for more patriotic reporting. The incident has also taken a tragic turn, with e.tv’s source, Lucky Phungula, having committed suicide, apparently because he could not
take the pressure of the controversy.
These offi cial responses are deeply regressive, and in fact quite sinister, coming as they do on the eve of the 2010 World Cup. Globally, governments of countries hosting mega-events often pressurise journalists to engage in media boosterism of these events and discourage critical reporting, and these comments suggest
that South Africa may not buck this trend.
But isn’t busting the criminals more important than protecting the sources? Indeed, there are real issues to be debated about the quality of e.tv’s story; so, for instance, do two criminals rustled up through a journalist’s friend constitute a crime trend, and why does crime become such a big story only when it threatens foreign tourists?
Yet I believe the fi ght against crime may be done more of a disservice in the long run through the forced disclosure of e.tv’s sources.
Potential sources may be reluctant to give journalists information, even on a confi – dential basis, as they fear that the information may be used against them in future. Stories on crime may dry up, which will
make it diffi cult, if not impossible, for a proper understanding to be developed of the scale of the problem
Crimes that would otherwise have been exposed by sources may not be exposed. While one or two crimes may remain unsolved if journalists do not reveal their sources, many more crimes may go unsolved if they do.
In any event, it is not the role of the media to assist the police in their investigative work; in fact, journalists may also be exposed to physical danger if they are considered to be spies for the authorities.
In many countries that protect confi dential sources, four conditions must be met to order disclosure of confi dential journalistic sources. The information sought must be necessary to prevent imminent or actual serious bodily harm.
The information must be absolutely necessary to determine guilt or innocence relating to a crime. The prosecution also needs to show that the information cannot be obtained by other means, and that the public interest in the disclosure of the confi dential information outweighs the public interest in the free fl ow of information.
The prosecution’s case against e.tv will probably not pass this four-part test, so the pursuit of the subpoenas may be an exercise in futility. Time and again in South Africa, journalists have been subpoenaed
as sources of fi rst resort, rather than sources of last resort. Andries Cornelissen, Benny Gool and Gasant Abarder come to mind in this regard.
The fact that one of the interviewees from the e.tv story has been arrested shows that this case is no exception, as the police had clearly not exhausted all other avenues of investigation at the time of issuing
the subpoenas. It is not at all clear that the threatened harm to tourists – who only arrive in several months time – was imminent.
Furthermore, if Cele’s comments triggered Phungula’s suicide – as has been alleged in one media report – then this incident strengthens the case for confi dential sources to be protected.
Prof Jane Duncan is the Highway Africa Chair of Media and Information Society at the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University.
To read the full version of this editorial go online to The South African Civil Society Information Service website www.sacsis.org.za
