INTEGRITY, HONESTY AND JOURNALISM

BY Bill Saidi
ONE of the most challenging assignments for me at The African Daily News in Salisbury in the late 1950s was this: introduce to and guide a white researcher/journalist through the gambling world of Harare township.
To this day, I have no idea who of the senior editors identified me as the candidate for this rather dangerous assignment. Gambling dens were, even then, illegal. They were likely to be raided by the police, the gamblers carted off to the police station. They were likely to pay a fine or, if they couldn’t, spend a night or two in the cells.
In other words, my own freedom could be endangered.
The freedom of the foreigner did not bear any contemplation. And what about the integrity of the newspaper? Wouldn’t there be headlines around the world – assuming the researcher-journalist was someone famous from a country like the United States?
Fortunately for me, these alarming moments of speculation occurred only later. The excitement of the assignment overwhelmed me totally. It was the fact of being picked to do the job that totally possessed me. For one thing, the editors had faith in me. They knew I would deliver. For another thing, they also knew I was raised in the ghetto and would know how to escape any challenging situations.
It was true I was raised entirely in the ghetto. I had resided in The Old Bricks, Jo’burg Lines, New Location and National. Mind you, I was not born in the ghetto. I was born at St David’s Mission in Chief Nyandoro’s area near what is now Marondera. I have absolutely no memory of this place. My first memories of life are in The Old Bricks, which was launched in 1938 – one year after I was born.
But I knew a number of relatives who gambled. Most people in the Old Bricks had devised surefire ways of supplementing their incomes. Whatever they worked at did not pay enough for them to survive on – without additional income. If they worked at a job where something could be stolen, they did steal. Those who worked in butcheries were the most fortunate: there was never an absence of relish in the home.
To me, it seemd the philosophy was that the employer invariably underpaid you in the belief that you would steal from him, anyway. The races didn’t trust each other. The Africans, in general, were aware they were being exploited. To level the playing field, they knew they had to steal from the employer. Once in a while, they stole too much ad the employer was bound to call in the police – both sides knew there was a limit to what could be stolen.
Meanwhile, I accomplished by assignment with some aplomb – otherwise why did the white person leave me with a gift? It was not money, but a carton containing liquid capsules. Not once, as he handed me the gift, did he bother to disclose to me what the capsules were for – diarrhea, epilepsy, diabetes, overweight or a problem with the libido.
I kept the capsules carefully hidden among my treasured possessions. In 1963, before I left for Northern Rhodesia, I discovered them among my possessions. I took them with me - perhaps someone there would help me identify them.
Unfortunately, I never found anyone in whom I could confide enough to ask to identify them. I eventually threw them away. I’ve always wondered if they might have changed my life if I knew what they were.
Later, I thought I had been naive. I should have been curious enough to find out what this person had given me as a gift for helping him with his assignment.
I think the basic problem for me was I would never expect reward for doing what I believed was my duty, my job. I have always realized that many people took advantage of this side of my character: some would call it a flaw.
I would hesitate to call it just good, old-fashioned honesty or integrity. Rising through the ranks in the profession, I learnt something about integrity or just honesty and credibility. People have to trust you, to believe in you, to confide in you in the absolute belief that you would not betray them – even if offered the Taj Mahal as a prize, for instance.
I have, incidentally, been to the Taj Mahal three times. Each time I have been on assignment. On neither of the assignments was I the beneficiary of a “gift”. I have also visited New York and gone up the Empire State Building – one time as a tourist, but another time to see officials of a Human rights group.
Journalism is loaded with perks for the person who is not squeamish about accepting such “gifts”, even if there is no obvious graft involved.
But I have been criticised for not bending the rules in any way: when I was the editor of a magazine, I was urged by the chief executive officer to personally campaign for advertising for the publication. But I said the group had an advertising department – wasn’t that their function? Yes, he said, but the editor had to take part: if the advertising revenue did not rise, his job would be on the line.
It was a challenging time for me and it was utterly immoral, from my point of view. Eventually, the magazine was shut down. I am not sure if that was the price of my integrity.
What has always frightened me in such situations is, if you go for it the first time, what would they ask you to do the next time - in the name of either saving your job or improving the advertising content of the publication?
What if an advertiser asked you to put an advert on the cover of the magazine – for a fee that would make the chief executive’s mouth water with you-know-what?
Some of these questions can be quite unnecessary if the company is facing bankruptcy. The board would just fire the editor if he didn’t go along. An editor with any spunk would probably resign. His grounds would be that there is no telling what they would ask him to do next – turn the entire cover to an advertiser?
Some journalists would say that for the sake of maintaining their credibility with the readers they would risk a little loss. But then others would say “to hell with credibility, if it’s going to lose us money”.
Advertisers know how much power they can wield with a publisher. At Zimpapers, I once did a feature on advertising. I mentioned that some agencies preferred Coloured models because there were not enough qualified black models to go around. Wasn’t it unfair, as the Coloured population was so small, compared with the black community? I had gathered this from interviews with a few people in the advertising industry, including the black models.
But this particular agency insisted the suggestion would not apply to them. They insisted on some kind of apology, to which the editor assented.
I found it utterly disgusting.
I have also been nauseated by the whole concept of “advertorial” – dressing up a huge advertising campaign with editorial copy which is disguised as “independent” and “neutral” when it is nothing of the kind.
I visited one newspaper in Chicago which told a group of visiting foreign journalists how they had lost a huge advertising campaign because they would not allow the company to put its adverts on the front page of the newspaper.
The advertising department had been keen on the campaign and were upset when the editor said NO. The editor’s position was: where would you stop? For instance, if the same company demanded the entire front page, how would you say – particularly if they were offering….any amount you demanded?
It’s an entirely different and probably a difficult matter in most African countries. Most major newspapers are either owned by the government or the ruling party, or partly so. The final word on probably all matters rests with the government. As long as it is the government which appoints most key editorial staff, where is the autonomy?
In other countries, even the advertising executives can be subject to government vetting – are they members of the ruling party or the opposition?
The consolation could be that the success of the newspapers, as viable financial concerns, is only of incidental interest to the government. As long as the opposition gets no mileage from the newspaper, nothing else matters.
In reality, it is only in South Africa, that there is genuine plurality of the media on the continent. Mozambique, at one time, seemed to be launched on this same path. But after the death of
Carlos Cardoso, an enterprising journalist who had been probing corruption in the government, that reputation went for a loop.
There seems, in general, to be as great fear of integrity or honesty in journalism in Africa, even in Zimbabwe with its new “inclusiveness”.