Picture: THINKSTOCK
Picture: THINKSTOCK

Related articles

In this article

FOR days I have wondered why I was irritated by The New Age editor Moegsien Williams’ call for "solution journalism". Williams wrote recently in City Press that the media should stop playing the role of unelected opposition. He called for a journalism that helped development and sought solutions, rather than highlighting problems.

On Tuesday night, as we celebrated our Wits Justice Project’s (WJP’s) role in freeing a man after 11 years of wrongful imprisonment, the reason for my reaction to Williams slapped me in the face like a wet copy of The New Age. The WJP experiments with using journalism, law and advocacy to investigate problems in the justice system and push for improvements. Journalists investigate and write about the many issues in our policing, courts and jails, including exposing serious problems ranging from the use of torture to prison conditions. They also work with the government, making policy inputs, for example, and with lawyers to use the courts to intervene to right a wrong.

One might hope this would get public support, knowing how easy it is for any of us to get caught in the web of a dysfunctional criminal system. "It could be you," is the project’s slogan. In fact, anticrime sentiments mean there is little public sympathy for those in the system — other than white celebrities such as Oscar Pistorius — even if they are still awaiting trial.

Does the government — many of whose number spent time in terrible apartheid prison conditions — welcome this "solution journalism"? Not always. The Department of Correctional Services often resists the WJP’s scrutiny with the same hostility many government departments have for the media. At the Pistorius trial, the then acting national commissioner of correctional services, Zach Modise, said the WJP published unsubstantiated or unverified facts and aimed only to depict the department negatively. It was his facts that were wrong, though.

WJP events are usually full of the negativity Williams dislikes so much. This week we were able to celebrate having played a role in getting Thembekile Molaudzi out of prison, where he was doing time for a crime he did not commit. After his conviction, he spent eight years looking for his court transcripts in order to lodge an appeal. He wrote to the minister of justice, the Judicial Conduct Committee, and the parliamentary portfolio committee, to no avail. Fortunately, a warder believed his story and phoned the WJP. Journalist Carolyn Raphaely worked for three years to enable him to prove his innocence — including getting the Constitutional Court to reopen the case after it had rejected it.

Now the WJP is meeting the department to look into 18 further cases in which prisoners cannot lodge an appeal because they cannot get their trial transcripts. In other words, the WJP does not just trash the justice system, it also works on solutions. And this is where Williams gets it so wrong: you cannot find solutions without highlighting problems.

Journalism begins with finding the issues, exposing them and trying to get the authorities to pay attention to them. This often involves working with those in opposition, or anyone who will help, including whistle-blowers and "unnamed sources" in the system. Discourage journalists from doing this and you are only encouraging those in authority who want to avoid the problems and have the media focus on their repetitive statements claiming progress and victory.

The WJP is unusual in its capacity, due to philanthropic funding, it is able to spend time on a case and possible solutions. Overstretched newsrooms can seldom do this, but they can do the first part of the task: exposing wrongdoing, identifying problems and causing trouble for those in authority. Journalists’ capacity for finding solutions is limited, but their capacity to draw attention to problems is hugely valuable.

• Harber is Caxton Professor of Journalism at Wits University