Ethics, trust and truth will keep us afloat in a sea of misinformation

Dear DM168 readers,

A press release by the Press Council of South Africa, of which Daily Maverick and more than 400 online and print media are members, made me think about the vital importance of professional codes of ethics and practice.

What are ethics? There are many definitions, but I like Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York Massimo Pigliucci's version: “Ethics has to do with how to arrive at as harmonious social interactions as it is humanly possible.”

Codes of ethics, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, are the “set of written rules that say how people in a particular organisation or country should behave”.

In journalism, our lodestar is the Press Code of ethics and conduct for print and online media. News content, produced by print and online media who abide by the Press Code and subject themselves to the processes of the Press Council, can be trusted as the Press Council upholds and advocates a set of standards that promotes credible and ethical journalism.

The Press Council is an independent, self-regulatory body headed by esteemed Judge Fritz Brand. It operates a co-regulatory model and comprises 12 council members: six members of the public and six members of the press. The Press Ombud is Advocate Herman Scholtz and he is assisted by deputy Press Ombuds Tyrone August and Franz Kruger.

Those who disagree with a ruling by the Press Ombud can appeal to an Appeals Panel, headed by Judge Bernard Ngoepe. The panel comprises eight public representatives and six press representatives (I am one of them). The public representatives outnumber the press representatives, so there is no bias. If one of the press representatives' publications are appearing before the panel at a hearing, they recuse themselves.

Whether we publish on our websites, apps, newspapers, WhatsApp, X, Facebook or TikTok, anything that is disseminated by Press Council members can be verified. And, if you think we are being unfair or have breached the Press Code, you can complain about our stories to the Public Advocate, who will respond and assist you with your complaint.

We can be trusted not because we are infallible and always get things right, but because we agree to try our damndest to tell the truth and to subject ourselves to the scrutiny of the Press Council’s rigorous processes.

If we are found wanting, we are obliged to apologise to anyone we have harmed and correct our errors. Most of the time, when we are alerted to a possible error by a member of the public, we correct it immediately, but sometimes when a reader or the subject of a story feels aggrieved by what has been written and are not happy with our response, they have the option of raising their complaint at the Press Council.

The preamble to our Press Code differentiates our journalism from the waves of unverified information that hits you daily on the digital sphere.

It states our purpose:

“The media exist to serve society. Their freedom provides for independent scrutiny of the forces that shape society and is essential to realising the promise of democracy. It enables citizens to make informed judgements on the issues of the day, a role whose centrality is recognised in the South African Constitution.”

And our promise:

“The media’s work is guided at all times by the public interest, understood to describe information of legitimate interest or importance to citizens.

"As journalists, we commit ourselves to the highest standards, to maintain credibility and keep the trust of the public. This means always striving for truth, avoiding unnecessary harm, reflecting a multiplicity of voices in our coverage of events, showing a special concern for children and other vulnerable groups, and exhibiting sensitivity to the cultural customs of their readers and the subjects of their reportage, and acting independently.”

This is beautiful and whether we work at Daily Maverick, News24, Mail & Guardian, Sowetan, My Broadband or GroundUp, or for the several hundred other member publications, our tribe of journalists who subscribe to the Press Code in South Africa does all it can to live up to this.

Independent Media, owned by Dr Iqbal Survé, decided to part ways with the Press Council in 2016, for not re-introducing a waiver clause to the Council’s Complaints Procedures that forces complainants to the Press Council to relinquish their rights to institute civil proceedings against media houses.

The waiver was scrapped from the Complaints Procedures following recommendations by the Press Freedom Commission, headed by the late Justice Pius Langa.

Since leaving the Press Council, Independent Media has published stories that would not have passed the scrutiny of the Press Code – such as Piet Rampedi’s Decuplets, published in 2021, which was found by Advocate Michael Donen to be reckless (and Independent Media’s own former internal Ombud, Yogas Nair, found that Rampedi failed to follow standard company procedure).

Independent has also attacked Daily Maverick’s founder, Branko Brkic, in a story published on IOL in March 2020 headlined “Daily Maverick asked me to write and do negative tweets about Dr Iqbal Survé”. Brkic challenged this in court, and Independent journalists and its group publications were ordered by a high court to publicly apologise to Brkic.

The press release by the Press Council this week informed all of us in the fraternity that Independent Media has decided to rejoin the Press Council – an event which we all welcome, because there are several good journalists who work at Independent whose work is compromised by the ethical breaches of a few.

Welcoming Independent back to the Press Council means that anyone who reads its publications and finds any ethical breaches can complain to the Press Council. And, if found to be wanting, Independent will have to publicly apologise and publish corrections. This is good for fact-based journalism and media accountability, and strengthens media self-regulation.

In this week’s lead story in DM168, Associate Editor Neesa Moodley, court reporter Vincent Cruywagen and our Limpopo correspondent Lucas Ledwaba took a closer look at who was involved in the horrific ethical breaches in the VBS bank scandal that led to losses of more than R2-billion, and who has been held accountable after this week’s revelation of the KPMG auditors’ secret R500-million settlement with the VBS bank’s liquidator.

Write to me, dear readers, at [email protected] so I can share your thoughts on our letters page on ethics and how to ensure that those who breach them are held accountable.

Yours in defence of truth,

Heather

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.