Combing through the facts of the Trevor Noah ‘family tragedy’
We checked the story and confirmed it with several sources — or so we thought
No, I never said that. They are talking about something they don’t know
SINCE the publication of “Trevor Noah’s family tragedy” last weekend, much has been written and said about our choice of front-page story — by readers, media observers and people directly involved in the story, particularly Noah.
Two central questions emerged: did we fabricate a story about Noah and his family? And, did we really deem the story to be of such national importance that we placed it on our front page?
The first question is easy to answer, but becomes complicated down the line.
Let’s start with the origin of the story.
Noah has become an international celebrity since the announcement that he would succeed Jon Stewart as host of the satirical US TV show The Daily
Show. As many other media outlets have done, we thought it a good idea to publish an article on his rise to fame based on interviews with some of the people who have influenced his life.
On Thursday last week, we approached his grandmother, Nomalizo Noah, to talk about her famous grandson.
She told us, however, that she did not want to speak immediately as she had just received word that a relative had been murdered — a teacher in Pietermaritzburg, whose body had been dumped in the bushes. She did not feel it appropriate to tell us her relative’s name.
We visited Noah’s grandmother at her home in Soweto the following day. She repeated the information, speaking about a family curse because two other women in her family had been murdered by their husbands. In addition, Trevor Noah’s mother was shot by her husband. She survived.
Nomalizo Noah identified the new victim as Gugu, but did not part with further information, apart from saying Trevor had not been told about the death. She said she had sent a contribution for the funeral with a woman who would attend it on behalf of the Noah family.
The manner in which the story shifted from a profile on Trevor Noah’s life to one that focused on a “family curse” is a familiar pattern in any newsroom and often leads to great success. A reporter starts testing a theory or idea, finds new facts and the story shifts in an altogether different direction.
In pursuit of the new direction, we set about trying to establish the identity of the dead woman. We approached the Midlands police, who confirmed that a woman by the name of Cebisile Happiness Khoza had been killed on May 8 and her body found in a sugar cane field.
We approached an education contact, who gave us the name of the principal at the school where she had taught. The principal gave us her father’s telephone number. We called Dumisani Khoza on Friday, and he immediately confirmed that his family was indeed related to Trevor Noah. Furthermore, he gave us permission to attend the funeral. On Saturday, after the funeral, he again confirmed the Noah link, adding that Trevor and his daughter were cousins.
We subsequently published the story.
After publication, Trevor Noah tweeted: “Thanks to some crafty journalism my family and I have spent the whole day trying to figure out if one of us died” and “Don’t always believe what you read. This is something I learned from aliens when I travelled to Mars last year.”
This set off alarm bells. Being criticised for being sensationalist or tabloid is nothing new. The Sunday Times is a regular feature on Twitter and other social media platforms on Sundays, after we hit the streets.
But Noah’s tweets seemed to suggest that we had made a fundamental mistake.
This led to an internal inquiry, led by our legal editor. My view, as editor, was that if there was a misstep, a leap of logic, we would have to comb through every fact to find our errors and repair the damage.
We retraced the steps taken by the two reporters who worked on the story. We checked their notebooks, accuracy checks and other internal mechanisms to establish the veracity of Noah’s tweets.
We also returned to the sources for the story.
The reporters were not at fault. Their notes were extensive and their checks had been done. Our normal editorial processes had been followed.
We also contacted Selebogo Moalusi and Jill Fritzo, Noah’s publicists in Johannesburg and New York respectively. We had contacted them previously for comment on the story and this week we did so again, requesting clarification of Noah’s tweets. We received no response.
So where could we have gone wrong?
We approached Dumisani Khoza, asking why Noah might have posted such tweets if he was indeed a cousin to the dead woman. After all, Khoza had confirmed twice to us that there was a familial relationship.
Khoza then said he had been informed by a relative in Johannesburg shortly after the death of his daughter that they were related to Noah. He personally did not know Noah.
On Wednesday, he flat-out denied telling our reporter that he had ever said they were related. “No, I never said that. They lied and they are talking about something they don’t know.”
I do not know why Khoza repeatedly confirmed and claimed a Noah connection and then recanted. It is difficult to imagine that he would deliberately have misled us. After all, this is what we would consider a straightforward story — not one of complexity and intrigue, spymasters and hidden agendas.
And perhaps this was our crucial error — as it has been with the story of former Proteas cricket captain Graeme Smith’s divorce proceedings: we had assumed a truthful link between Khoza and Nomalizo Noah’s statements.
It is clear that the very same excruciatingly rigorous tests through which we put our investigative unit’s work — the painstaking fact-checking of stories because of the incredibly high stakes — must be applied throughout the newspaper. We cannot assume that stories that appear uncomplicated on the surface require little more than a straightforward conclusion based on events and sources.
For when we returned to the Noah story this week, we found an alternative narrative.
There is indeed a Noah relative who was brutally slain in KwaZulu-Natal. She was a female relative and Nomalizo Noah was her aunt. Gugulethu Gwamanda was found dead on a deserted road on an abandoned plantation near Baynesfield, outside Richmond. She was killed on March 14. Her former lover, Siphamandla Phoswa, appeared in the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court this week to face a murder charge.
Gwamanda, a mother of five, was a teacher at Umthoqotho High School in Sweetwaters, Pietermaritzburg. Gwamanda’s sister Nosipho confirmed this week that they were indeed related to the Noah family.
Clearly, we had not delved down into the facts as deeply as we should have.
At the time of publication, did we have any reason to doubt that our sources for the story were correct? No. But, on reflection, should this story have been offered to readers of the Sunday Times in the condition that it was? No. Was it sufficiently weighty to be offered as the main story on our front page? No.
Each week we go through an editorial process — one that is intense, demanding. But for all the creative endeavour that goes into producing this newspaper, we can never lose sight of the fact that the Sunday Times is a business. We are in the business of selling the news.
Selling copies of the Sunday Times is premised on a dual strategy of long-term subscriptions and single-copy sales where the paper is sold at retail outlets. It is the pursuit of the latter — where a potential buyer of the Sunday Times judges it only on the strength of the front page — that often informs our final decisions for the week’s paper. How many readers can we tempt on a Sunday morning into purchasing single copies of the paper based on the appeal of the front page?
Does this always make for good decisions? I would normally say yes. The instance of the Noah front page was not one of them.
This week, as I read through similar experiences at other newspapers across the world, I came across a statement from a former New York Times executive who said: “When you’re wrong in this profession, there is only one thing to do. And that is get it right as fast as you can.”
This is what we will do at the Sunday Times. We will examine our processes again, put in place mechanisms that will not lead us into the very uncomfortable space we found ourselves in this past week. We take to heart the criticism levelled against us because it will improve our editorial processes and make us more vigilant as editors, reporters and producers of the news.
Lastly, I deeply regret any hurt caused to the Noah and Khoza families.