Media often falls short

THE letter by Gerda Kruger of

UCT (“Wrong impression created”, Saturday Argus, April 28) is remarkable for both the complete evisceration of the integrity of reporting at Weekend Argus, as well as the abject silence from the editor on a complaint that scores a direct hit on her paper’s credibility.

Readers are seldom privy to the complete background to content appearing in the media, and so rely on the innate trustworthiness of the paper’s journalists and editors for honest investigation and balanced reporting.

Trust and competence is the cornerstone of a newspaper’s reputation. Democracy demands nothing less than a press that can be trusted by its readers.

But “trust” appears an increasingly elastic quality in some South African media houses.

Once again, Independent Media has been caught with its pants down “spinning a story” to the point of providing a fundamentally different impression to what anyone aware of all the facts would allow.

Were it not for Kruger’s complaint and inside knowledge of this matter, the unsuspecting reader would never have known otherwise. Which begs the question: what else that is reported by Independent Media is similarly suspect? A lot, it seems.

When readers realise this is no isolated “mistake”, but appears part of a consistent pattern of “bending the news” towards a particular political agenda, then it’s time to move on to more trustworthy sources.

Weekend Argus owes its readers a trustworthy explanation. And it seems, to UCT, an apology.