Our loyalty is to society

THE Daily Dispatch is at loggerheads with the ruling party over its reports on Wednesday about a proposal made at the ANC’s Eastern Cape policy conference.

At issue is our report that a proposal was made in the economic transformation commission to limit the benefits due to the country’s first lady to a single wife of a president who has more than one.

A secondary report on the proposal and the subsequent discussion wrongly stated in the introductory paragraph that the proposal was made by the provincial conference when, in fact, it was made to the conference.

We corrected that error on the front page of yesterday’s paper, but stood by the substance of the report, which made clear it was a proposal that was well received, but that the conference ended without completing its agenda and that the proposal was not formally accepted or rejected.

This newspaper has been at odds with the powers of the day frequently in its 140-year history – most famously during the editorship of Donald Woods, who defied the National Party to report on the police murder of Steve Biko.

The current tension is comparable only insofar as it pits us against the party in power.

We do not seek conflict with governments or the parties that have controlled them. Nor, though, do we shy away from it when it is the inevitable consequence of telling the whole story.

“The press exists to serve society,” says the preamble to the South African Press Code, which was updated last October. “Its freedom provides for independent scrutiny of the forces that shape society and is essential to realising the promise of democracy.”

There is a widely held view that the ANC deserves the loyalty of the media because it was the primary agent of our liberation.

Factions in the party, which currently is crippled by division, seek daily to claim that loyalty for themselves and flood the media with negative news and information about their rivals.

In common with most other newspapers, the Dispatch believes its loyalty is to society at large and to its readers in particular.

As the ANC moves towards its year-end conference in Mangaung, where the country’s next president will be anointed, the battle for supremacy will get uglier because the stakes are so high for the players.

The stakes are high also for the country and its citizens.

If the contestants elect to use issues such as the president’s polygamy as weapons, we are obliged to report on that, like everything else, as fully as we can.