A ray of light among the dark clouds over media freedom

This week’s high court ruling that global retailer Steinhoff must hand over the 7,000-page forensic report into its accounting irregularities is a major victory for corporate accountability and media freedom in SA. The Financial Mail and amaBhungane went to court after Steinhoff refused to release the 2019 report on the basis that it was confidential and contained “legal privileged” information. Instead, it had made public a somewhat slimmer 11-page summary. The Financial Mail motivated its request on the grounds that it investigates and exposes corporate scandals, and is thus responsible for providing the public with accurate information regarding issues in the public interest.

Western Cape judge Gcinikhaya Nuku agreed, ordering that a copy of the report be handed over within 10 days.

Steinhoff owns more than 12,000 stores in more than 30 countries, including Ackermans, Pep, Unitrans and Poundland. In 2017 it emerged that the company had overstated profits and assets by R200bn. The share price plunged more than 90%, crippling many investors across the globe. Among them were companies entrusted with the pensions of workers, including SA’s Government Employees Pension Fund, the value of whose stake in Steinhoff fell from R24bn to R1.8bn.

SA’s credibility as a country with stringent corporate responsibility nosedived, too. The failure to bring charges against former CEO Markus

Jooste and seven other directors named as masterminds of the scheme has rubbed salt into the wound.

But Nuku’s ruling offers some comfort, sending a message that public interest trumps an organisation’s attempts to keep its dirty laundry in the hamper.

We should not underestimate the importance of the judgment. The media’s ability to keep citizens informed on issues that affect them remains under threat globally.

Just this week Al Jazeera war correspondent Shireen

Abu Aqla was shot dead in the West Bank. She is among

17 journalists killed in the line of duty this year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Seven of those were killed while covering the war in Ukraine.

Russia, never a fan of keeping its people in the loop, has long been a dangerous place for journalists. But since the start of the war against Ukraine, president Vladimir Putin has gone into overdrive, even banning media outlets from using the words war, occupation and invasion.

But it is not just in war zones that media freedom is under threat. Countries such as North Korea, Eritrea, Iran and China — where democracy is a four-letter word — have no press freedom at all. Journalists have been arrested, deported, sent to labour camps and even sentenced to death for deviating from the party line.

Even in SA, with its famously liberal constitution, media freedom is under threat, falling two spots in the World Press Freedom Index released last week by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). It came in at a respectable 35th out of 180 countries, but RSF noted that South African journalists “have in recent years often been subjected to verbal attacks from political leaders and activists”.

It reports that political tension sometimes gives rise to disinformation or smear campaigns against media outlets, especially on social media. It adds that the ANC has at times resorted to such campaigns, but those waged by the EFF “are by far the most virulent” and that party’s “leaders and supporters do not hesitate to incite violence and accuse certain journalists of racism”.

Globally, the report highlights the “disastrous” effects of a globalised and unregulated online information space that encourages fake news and propaganda. It says that within democratic societies, divisions are growing as a result of “the spread of opinion-media and of disinformation circuits that are amplified by the way social media functions”.

So the Steinhoff judgment is a little patch of blue in a cloudy sky, a pleasant reminder that our judiciary remains robust, our media alert and our private sector open for interrogation. Steinhoff may well appeal the ruling, but we hope that, for the good of the people, it doesn’t.

The media’s ability to keep citizens informed is under threat globally