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By Adri Senekal de Wet- If companies can successfully vet their employees and board members, why can a media outfit not do the same?
amaBhungane proudly presents itself as a so-called centre for investigative journalism, but could not uncover the fact that its chairperson, Professor Tawana Kupe, had been found guilty of sexual harassment while acting as deputy vice-chancellor and vice-principal at the University of Witwatersrand in 2016.
Of even greater concern is a statement made by Caroline James, Advocacy Coordinator at amaBhungane, during an interview on ChaiFM.
She said: “I think it is an example of information that is of public interest beyond being interesting to the public, and I just need to make that distinction. But I think this information has now been brought into the public sphere by other media outlets, and we are certainly willing to cooperate with those media outlets, but they are obviously running with the story to the extent that they have the information and are able to continue reporting on it. There is no need for amaBhungane to provide a parallel investigation as supporting interest.”
The current media narrative, propagated by a select few biased media outlets and friends to amaBhungane, is to promote amaBhungane as the modern-day benchmark for public interest reporting, yet it fails to report on or show a willingness to investigate the sexual harassment claims made against its own chairperson.
This stinks of hypocrisy at the highest level.
Reportedly, when amaBhungane’s managing partner Sam Sole learned of the allegations – through other media outlets’ coverage mind you – Kupe apparently offered to step down.
amaBhungane, though, decided to keep him on until the next scheduled board meeting a full two months later.
They only decided to accept his immediate resignation when the media started reporting on them.
Quite the golden standard for honourable investigative journalism.
Ironically, Kupe himself released a statement back in 2013 saying that the University of the Witwatersrand was to investigate sexual harassment allegations across the campus, only about three years before he himself was found guilty of sexual harassment.
The media tsunami suddenly devolves into a gentle wave.
In its initial two reports on Kupe’s scandalous past, News24, which has become fast friends with amaBhungane, failed to mention amaBhungane even once in these wordy articles, let alone the fact that Kupe was the proverbial head of the snake at the now disgraced media outlet. Oddly, they did point out that Kupe was “an expert in journalism and media studies”.
To its credit, News24 released a follow-up article two days later when it became public knowledge that Kupe had reportedly resigned from amaBhungane in what was, to its credit, balanced reporting, which we do not always see.
However, I cannot help but suspect that if this “alleged” sexual predator were the chairperson of a proudly black-owned and operated corporation, these outlets would have undoubtedly published many more exposés and a series of unfairly biased op-eds attacking the company and its c-suite for not knowing and not acting sooner.
The self-aggrandised investigative journalism outlet has conspicuously failed to publish any articles or one of their renowned exposés regarding Kupe’s recent departure from the University of Pretoria – a story which seems to be right in their wheelhouse, unless, of course, they find themselves at the very heart of the scandal.
Should we continue to take these pretenders at face value when they tout themselves as the bastion of investigative journalism beyond all reproach? I put it to you: is amaBhungane still “digging dung and fertilising democracy”, or do they now more resemble lowly mudslingers hiding behind their own sand castles?
Sam Sole of Amabhungane
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