Ombudsman finds in favour of newspaper

Report accurately exposed public protector's role in shielding disgraced academic

Selby Baqwa vs Mail & Guardian
South African Press Ombudsman
March 1999

The South African Press Ombudsman has rejected a complaint by the Public Protector against a report in the Mail & Guardian weekly newspaper on his efforts to protect a senior academic accused of impropriety. The academic, a former Vice Chancellor of the Vaal Technikon was fired in November 1998. The article complained of was a front-page headline titled, "Mr Clean tried to shield dirty professor". It said the Public Protector, Selby Baqwa, had tried to shield the professor, going as far as trying to seek legal aid for him while the latter was the subject of a lengthy disciplinary hearing by the technikon.

The professor had been suspended in 1997 after being accused of financial impropriety and he sought Baqwa's help. The latter wrote several letters to the technikon including one where he expressly instructed the technikon not to expel the professor. Baqwa had also endorsed a threat from the ministry of education to cut off state funding to the institution if it sacked the vice chancellor. The disciplinary hearing nevertheless found the V-C guilty of five of the 12 counts against him.

The Mail & Guardian's article was based on previously unpublished letters sent by Baqwa to the institution's council. It was published the week that the disciplinary hearing ruled against the V-C. It recorded that the same week that Baqwa was issuing threats to the council, he was being accorded a much bigger budget at a government conference on corruption. The Public Protector's office did not comment in time for the Mail & Guardian's deadline. He is reported to have told another newspaper the day after the article appeared that it was "gutter journalism devoid of any journalistic ethics".

At an open hearing before the Press Ombudsman, the newspaper's counsel argued that Baqwa's letters had grown increasingly strident. Baqwa explained his intervention in the case on the grounds that he was merely concerned that the "correct" process was followed in the proceedings against the V-C.

Decision

The Press Ombudsman, Ed Linington, found that Baqwa's complaint had "no substance. Allegations that the article was reckless, malicious and unethical and that the reporters acted in total disregard of the truth were not substantiated," he said. "On the contrary, it must be said they produced an article that fairly reflected the factual evidence at their disposal." He went on to hold that the article in question was "fully within the role of the press in a democratic society in that it revealed matters of public interest and importance and did so in a reasonable and responsible manner."

He rejected Baqwa's claim that he merely sought to see the correct process followed saying that his "later interventions become progressively less neutral". The Ombudsman also rejected Baqwa's claim that the Mail & Guardian had failed to give him enough time to comment. Said he, "In short, it is inappropriate for Mr Baqwa to complain that he was not given the opportunity to comment before publication when he was given such an opportunity. It is apparent from his own remarks that he was unlikely to have gone beyond what was already in the article."

Linington said Baqwa's intervention "appeared aimed at preventing implementation of the recommendations of the disciplinary enquiry that the VC be dismissed." He noted that even on the public protector's own interpretation of the extent of his powers, and conceding for argument's sake that he had acted within them, the article accurately stated that the interventions amounted to an attempt to protect or shield the V-C. "It seems to me that the complaint is really not that the Mail & Guardian article was inaccurate, but that it accurately exposed what the public protector had done. Such exposure cannot be characterised as reckless, malicious and unethical."