IF I said I am confused about the process Buffalo City Metro is following to resolve its dispute with the Gonubie residents who claim to own a portion of the main road, it would be an understatement.
And the fault for that lies with the metro’s communications professionals.
Over a series of e-mail and telephonic exchanges to clarify the state of play in the dispute, metro spokesman Keith Ngesi simply muddled along to a point where I began to doubt my own eyewitness reporting of the East London High Court order setting out the process for resolving the dispute.
This is unfortunate, as I don’t doubt that the legal and property specialists working on the Gonubie road conundrum are professionals who know exactly what is going on in the saga.
And I certainly don’t doubt my own reports on the legal dispute.
But why would BCM not handle the communications requirements on this matter much more effectively, so that clarity is promoted?
The example points to the very real challenges the Dispatch – like all other media – faces in trying to get relevant, accurate, contemporaneous information out of communications people whose roles in government departments, agencies and private companies should be to keep the public informed.
A snap survey of my colleagues in the Dispatch newsroom shows broad agreement on the extent of the problem of poor media relations.
Ngesi is not the worst communicator in the city or province. On the contrary. To his great credit, Ngesi answers his phone and tries to provide a response when questioned. He is also extremely personable, even when contacted during his off-time, attending a private engagement.
Chief reporter Mike Loewe says Ngesi “rarely lets a query go by. It might take time, but he is committed to getting back with an answer”.
Ngesi’s colleagues, on the other hand, are not rated highly in the Dispatch newsroom at all. Loewe relates a litany of examples of BCM censorship that makes a mockery of freedom of speech and information. He says officials who offer a direct service to the public often cite the policy that they are not authorised to speak to the media, “the implication being that the media are below the public when it comes to access to public information”.
“Every effort is made to ensure the media is not able to hear or follow proceedings of council meetings. Bundles of (open agenda) white papers are rarely made available as a matter of course; they have to be requested.
“The sound system in the upstairs gallery is muffled and echoes, whereas councillors have microphones with speakers directing sound at them at their desks.”
He adds that “exigency” or last minute items are usually handed out minutes before the meeting starts, with no copies made available to the media in the gallery.
Apart from the metro, the worst performing government departments for communication are the provincial office of the premier (OTP), department of education and department of economic development, environment and tourism.
Deputy political editor Mphumzi Zuzile, who has faced a blacklist from at least one government department, says of the office of the premier: “I’ve had about six media enquiries which have simply been ignored and in some cases I have been told ‘they cannot respond to a million queries from one publication’.”
In one rude response, the OTP communications head told Zuzile not to call her on her private number and that she does not work for the Dispatch.
“A big issue is that communicators are more like personal assistants to MECs rather than media experts, which has implications for their ability to act as objective media advisers,” says Zuzile.
Loewe points to defensive communicators’ hostility towards the Dispatch because of this paper’s exposés of corruption and maladministration as a reason for the often fraught daily interactions between reporters and communicators.
The National Prosecuting Authority’s Eastern Cape officials are impervious to being threatened or cajoled into offering a better media relations service.
Almost a year ago, I asked regional NPA spokesman Tshepo Ndwalaza to facilitate the receipt of the roll of criminal trials set down for East London by his bosses in the directorate of public prosecution office in Grahamstown.
In February NPA national spokesman Nathi Mncube said Ndwalaza would provide the information “soon”.
We are still waiting.
To be fair, the problem is probably more attributable to an uncooperative Grahamstown office than Ndwalaza, but the effect of this failure means the Dispatch is unable to plan the deployment of limited resources to important court cases ahead of time.
Recently, I asked Ndwalaza for information on the problems associated with managing the maintenance court functions. His response – after initially saying he would be away for the rest of the week and could not respond to my query – was that it was a question which actually could only be answered by the national justice department, even though maintenance officers are drawn from the ranks of the NPA – which, administratively, is part of the national justice department.
Trying to get information from a police duty spokesman on the weekend can be a serious challenge, especially on a holiday weekend as we encountered just before New Year’s day this year. With thousands of visitors in the province and information reaching the Dispatch of a number of murders and rapes and even a suicide in the Mthatha area, local liaison officers seemed to go underground, with phones switched off or calls ignored.
Following a formal complaint, police head honcho Marinda Mills undertook to deal immediately with the “non-availability of standby communication officials”, who are expected to provide a 24-hour service. We’ll wait to see if things improve during the next festive season.
Loyiso Mpalantshane in the Dispatch Mthatha bureau relates the response of police provincial headquarters spokesperson Sibongile Soci who, when asked why provincial commissioner Celiwe Binti had skipped addressing a memorial function, said: “I am not Binta, why don’t you ask her?”
On the West Bank, the people of Mercedes-Benz (MBSA) have almost perfected the fine art of lifting a middle finger at a pesky journalist – they simply ignore you and hope you’ll go away, despite the company dominating the private sector industrial landscape of East London.
Regardless of the issue on which one wants comment, Dispatch business writer Siya Miti says “it’s hard to get a pointed answer to a straight question”.
Metro news editor Andrew Stone, who is also the Dispatch motoring editor, said the MBSA plant should be able to fill the newspaper with good news stories, “yet we rarely hear from them and getting comment is generally a problem”.
Late last year I researched an article about MBSA receiving money from the government’s training layoff scheme to pay workers during the plant shutdown to retool for the new C-class vehicle.
There is a significant ethical issue here around well-heeled shareholders in Germany and elsewhere of parent company Daimler avoiding paying workers in South Africa during a forced shutdown and relying on a third world government to pick up the bill.
That our government’s initial intention behind the training scheme was to shore up jobs in businesses in distress due to the international economic contagion carries little weight with MBSA.
Neither has it mattered that MBSA’s parent multinational distributed à2.3-billion (about R30-billion) back to shareholders in profits for the 2013 financial year. The Dispatch has still not received exact figures on MBSA’s handout from government.
The company’s view is my questioning was cynical, that they participated in a transparent process with Numsa and that “ethically we can’t see a problem”. Subsequently, I’ve been sidelined by MBSA’s Johann Evertse and his corporate communications team, in the hope that if they ignore me, I’ll simply go away.
It’s not all bad, however. Highly rated by Mpalantshane are the health department’s Sizwe Kupelo, Arrive Alive’s Tsepo Machaea, OR Tambo District Municipality’s disaster management official Vusumzi Mgobozi and police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Mzukisi Fatyela.
Stone says Kupelo “doesn’t just give comment but often intervenes in the matter and sorts it out”.
Border-Kei Chamber of Business executive director Les Holbrook is often a good source of insight on issues affecting business in the region. “He says it like he sees and feels it,” comments Loewe.
Ray Hartle is a senior writer for the Dispatch
Communication frontlines
And the fault for that lies with the metro’s communications professionals.
Over a series of e-mail and telephonic exchanges to clarify the state of play in the dispute, metro spokesman Keith Ngesi simply muddled along to a point where I began to doubt my own eyewitness reporting of the East London High Court order setting out the process for resolving the dispute.
This is unfortunate, as I don’t doubt that the legal and property specialists working on the Gonubie road conundrum are professionals who know exactly what is going on in the saga.
And I certainly don’t doubt my own reports on the legal dispute.
But why would BCM not handle the communications requirements on this matter much more effectively, so that clarity is promoted?
The example points to the very real challenges the Dispatch – like all other media – faces in trying to get relevant, accurate, contemporaneous information out of communications people whose roles in government departments, agencies and private companies should be to keep the public informed.
A snap survey of my colleagues in the Dispatch newsroom shows broad agreement on the extent of the problem of poor media relations.
Ngesi is not the worst communicator in the city or province. On the contrary. To his great credit, Ngesi answers his phone and tries to provide a response when questioned. He is also extremely personable, even when contacted during his off-time, attending a private engagement.
Chief reporter Mike Loewe says Ngesi “rarely lets a query go by. It might take time, but he is committed to getting back with an answer”.
Ngesi’s colleagues, on the other hand, are not rated highly in the Dispatch newsroom at all. Loewe relates a litany of examples of BCM censorship that makes a mockery of freedom of speech and information. He says officials who offer a direct service to the public often cite the policy that they are not authorised to speak to the media, “the implication being that the media are below the public when it comes to access to public information”.
“Every effort is made to ensure the media is not able to hear or follow proceedings of council meetings. Bundles of (open agenda) white papers are rarely made available as a matter of course; they have to be requested.
“The sound system in the upstairs gallery is muffled and echoes, whereas councillors have microphones with speakers directing sound at them at their desks.”
He adds that “exigency” or last minute items are usually handed out minutes before the meeting starts, with no copies made available to the media in the gallery.
Apart from the metro, the worst performing government departments for communication are the provincial office of the premier (OTP), department of education and department of economic development, environment and tourism.
Deputy political editor Mphumzi Zuzile, who has faced a blacklist from at least one government department, says of the office of the premier: “I’ve had about six media enquiries which have simply been ignored and in some cases I have been told ‘they cannot respond to a million queries from one publication’.”
In one rude response, the OTP communications head told Zuzile not to call her on her private number and that she does not work for the Dispatch.
“A big issue is that communicators are more like personal assistants to MECs rather than media experts, which has implications for their ability to act as objective media advisers,” says Zuzile.
Loewe points to defensive communicators’ hostility towards the Dispatch because of this paper’s exposés of corruption and maladministration as a reason for the often fraught daily interactions between reporters and communicators.
The National Prosecuting Authority’s Eastern Cape officials are impervious to being threatened or cajoled into offering a better media relations service.
Almost a year ago, I asked regional NPA spokesman Tshepo Ndwalaza to facilitate the receipt of the roll of criminal trials set down for East London by his bosses in the directorate of public prosecution office in Grahamstown.
In February NPA national spokesman Nathi Mncube said Ndwalaza would provide the information “soon”.
We are still waiting.
To be fair, the problem is probably more attributable to an uncooperative Grahamstown office than Ndwalaza, but the effect of this failure means the Dispatch is unable to plan the deployment of limited resources to important court cases ahead of time.
Recently, I asked Ndwalaza for information on the problems associated with managing the maintenance court functions. His response – after initially saying he would be away for the rest of the week and could not respond to my query – was that it was a question which actually could only be answered by the national justice department, even though maintenance officers are drawn from the ranks of the NPA – which, administratively, is part of the national justice department.
Trying to get information from a police duty spokesman on the weekend can be a serious challenge, especially on a holiday weekend as we encountered just before New Year’s day this year. With thousands of visitors in the province and information reaching the Dispatch of a number of murders and rapes and even a suicide in the Mthatha area, local liaison officers seemed to go underground, with phones switched off or calls ignored.
Following a formal complaint, police head honcho Marinda Mills undertook to deal immediately with the “non-availability of standby communication officials”, who are expected to provide a 24-hour service. We’ll wait to see if things improve during the next festive season.
Loyiso Mpalantshane in the Dispatch Mthatha bureau relates the response of police provincial headquarters spokesperson Sibongile Soci who, when asked why provincial commissioner Celiwe Binti had skipped addressing a memorial function, said: “I am not Binta, why don’t you ask her?”
On the West Bank, the people of Mercedes-Benz (MBSA) have almost perfected the fine art of lifting a middle finger at a pesky journalist – they simply ignore you and hope you’ll go away, despite the company dominating the private sector industrial landscape of East London.
Regardless of the issue on which one wants comment, Dispatch business writer Siya Miti says “it’s hard to get a pointed answer to a straight question”.
Metro news editor Andrew Stone, who is also the Dispatch motoring editor, said the MBSA plant should be able to fill the newspaper with good news stories, “yet we rarely hear from them and getting comment is generally a problem”.
Late last year I researched an article about MBSA receiving money from the government’s training layoff scheme to pay workers during the plant shutdown to retool for the new C-class vehicle.
There is a significant ethical issue here around well-heeled shareholders in Germany and elsewhere of parent company Daimler avoiding paying workers in South Africa during a forced shutdown and relying on a third world government to pick up the bill.
That our government’s initial intention behind the training scheme was to shore up jobs in businesses in distress due to the international economic contagion carries little weight with MBSA.
Neither has it mattered that MBSA’s parent multinational distributed à2.3-billion (about R30-billion) back to shareholders in profits for the 2013 financial year. The Dispatch has still not received exact figures on MBSA’s handout from government.
The company’s view is my questioning was cynical, that they participated in a transparent process with Numsa and that “ethically we can’t see a problem”. Subsequently, I’ve been sidelined by MBSA’s Johann Evertse and his corporate communications team, in the hope that if they ignore me, I’ll simply go away.
It’s not all bad, however. Highly rated by Mpalantshane are the health department’s Sizwe Kupelo, Arrive Alive’s Tsepo Machaea, OR Tambo District Municipality’s disaster management official Vusumzi Mgobozi and police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Mzukisi Fatyela.
Stone says Kupelo “doesn’t just give comment but often intervenes in the matter and sorts it out”.
Border-Kei Chamber of Business executive director Les Holbrook is often a good source of insight on issues affecting business in the region. “He says it like he sees and feels it,” comments Loewe.
Ray Hartle is a senior writer for the Dispatch
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