Revolving door needed to link newsroom to state

There is a strong bond between journalists and communicators decorated by fraternal relations emanating from previous lives of communicators having been journalists and vice versa.

Because we even call each other “comrades”, it was a bit strange reading what could be called a one-sided communicator performance rating card by Ray Hartle (“Communication frontlines” DD, September 14) calling us an under-performing group of people with very few exceptions.

In taking his criticism on the chin, Pallo Jordan’s words that “one wakes a friend up to smell the coffee, not to toss the steaming brew in his face” came to mind.

Responding discourse should go beyond the current argument between journalism, the so-called bright side, and corporate communications, the so-called dark side, because of the importance of informing a society about its world.

Our country is a participatory constitutional democracy with communications central to the operations of government and development. Communicators provide information to the public through public meetings, news media, radio stations, social networks and campaigns.

We don’t give this information to journalists to entertain themselves with but for them to inform the broader public.

Because journalists serve society, it is important they understand what is given to them in order to inform and educate society properly.

In many instances, this doesn’t happen because journalists are easily persuaded to believe the side of those who leak information before they get official information.

Anything you send them is called a spin with communicators called spin-doctors by journalists.

Secondly, many journalists don’t read the information sent to them. Hardly will you find them mining voluminous documents for information  (We disagree. We do this daily. – The Ed). Leaked information and soundbytes seem to be their favourite diet.

This was a key issue discussed at the recent Highway Africa conference in a seminar pitting former journalist Xolisa Vapi, now head of MTN corporate communications, against former corporate communications manager Songezo Zibi, now editor of Business Day.

Vapi argued that journalists who go to, for example, annual performance results releases by JSE listed companies not having done their homework, publish information written by communicators to their audiences and not proper stories.

City Press editor-at-large Mondli Makhanya conceded, blaming journalists’ inability to read and understand reports.

We have now established one aspect of the problem. But must we sit and complain about each other’s weaknesses? No, because people don’t care about that,  but about us working together to give them the information they need.

We should sit down as comrades, accept each other’s legitimate duty to serve society, and list concerns from each side so we can resolve them amicably for the benefit of our society.

The formation of meetings between the government and journalists through Sanef was inspired by the need to find each other. It is time to percolate this to our province so that all the acrimony we seem to experience is brought to an end.

Many journalists complain that information responses to questions they send to us take forever to come. I accept this might delay their stories, especially on early deadlines.

But these lamentations ignore the fact that journalists send questions to communicators very late, yet demand communicators meet their deadlines.

And when you don’t, you are labeled a weak and under performing communicator not worth your salt.

I am not saying some of the examples from the Dispatch journalists are right or wrong. I have no opinion, as I don’t know the whole story. But I agree with what Vapi said: it is healthy for relations between journalists and communicators to be strained at times even though this was ephemeral.

Analyst William Gumede argues that in new democracies the media is often required to go beyond the traditional role of just informing, but must contribute to public education and enlightenment.

Hence journalists must spend time reading information given to them so they understand work being done and reports published. They should not only pay attention to leaks.

Speaking at the Highway Africa editor’s dinner, rural development and agrarian reform MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane said it was important for journalists to mine reports to get information; ask questions based on their own reading of the information so they, and not sources, are able to play the watchdog role on behalf of society properly.

The provincial platform we should create must help us to work together because we need each other. Zibi was correct to say journalists and communicators are not fighting as badly as people thought.

I am sure I speak for many communicators when I say, there is nothing more irksome as journalists believing leaked information, either from the opposition or labour unions, before they get an institution’s information on a particular issue.

By the time you send the response they demand, it will be squashed into the last sentences of the story with no proper context of what you said. At the end of the day, it is the reader and the truth that suffer when journalists portray our organisations in a bad light.

Much as journalists can publish their criticism of communicators, we too can do that. But I think it is important for both sides to sort out differences and understand each other’s environment to have informed expectations instead of attacking each other in newspaper pages.

Communicators don’t delay responding to journalists because they get a kick from it, there are internal dynamics, which are frustrating to us more than to journalists.

Sanef in the Eastern Cape should link with the office of the premier communications and private sector firms to set up quarterly meetings to discuss strategic, operational issues and complaints from both sides.

From this we will come out with clear lines of cooperation. We will be friendlier than before so that the revolving door of both the newsroom and communication divisions of the private and public sector will be wide open for anyone who wants to cross back.

Mvusiwekhaya Sicwetsha is  rural development  spokesman