BEHIND THE NEWS: Threats over WSU accreditation article not justified

Without fear or favour. That is the mantra journalists the world over live by. Whether we like the information or not, it is our duty to tell important stories without prejudice.

Often that news makes us uncomfortable — sometimes reporting it is downright dangerous — and there are times when we lose sleep and cry buckets of tears over the stories we have to tell.

This week, the Daily Dispatch came under attack by people who perceived our revelations of problems with the accreditation of several Walter Sisulu University (WSU) degrees as an attack on all those who have studied at the institution.

We received personal threats and even calls to burn down our building. But our resolve remains steadfast because we know the allegations against us could not be further from the truth.

The university is, in fact, a bastion of pride to many of our journalists and managers, most of whom earned their own qualifications there, or worked in one of its faculties.

It is, by far, the most represented institution in our newsroom.

So any aspersions that reflect badly on WSU graduates do the same for us. We are just as hurt. But the truth must come out.

The longer there is silence about what appears to be institutional failure, the less hope there is that the problems can be rectified.

Being a news journalist is a tough job. It requires one to be brave because the pursuit of the truth will make a lot of people uncomfortable.

What we, the Daily Dispatch team, experienced this week has been shocking and disappointing. We regularly write about all our local universities.

With WSU in particular, our weekly careers pages are filled with students, past and present, from across all disciplines who do great things in their fields.

WSU is an incredibly important part of the Eastern Cape. For every family that has a graduate, there is one from Unitra, Border Technikon, or WSU, as it’s now known.

It’s functionality and success affects thousands of Eastern Cape students and their families. It shocked us to the core to see the profanities sent to us via our social media platforms.

WSU alumna have disappointed us the most. They have led the attack on the Dispatch when they should be custodians of WSU.

For every 100 or so hateful comments, only about two were logical, asking what WSU management was saying in response to the allegations.

We were touched by a few students who inboxed us, asking what was happening because they were worried about their prospects of obtaining employment.

That is why we published the story — so that they know where they stand.

The biggest disappointment was a young man who made a TikTok video calling on WSU students to “visit” the Dispatch to “talk”.

In isiXhosa, he said “kuzo qhawuka u nobathana,” which in this context means ‘hell will break loose’.

It took less than a minute to find him. He is a former WSU SRC member at the Mthatha campus and now a teacher at a high school in the same town.

This is someone who every day has the responsibility of shaping tomorrow’s leaders.

His principal told us the young man joined the school last year for his teaching practicals. The principal was extremely disappointed by the video, just like the rest of us.

With this story, the Dispatch did what it normally does when working on documents that are leaked to us.

When a journalist receives documents or a tip-off, the first thing he or she does is to check their authenticity before calling the affected party to get their side of the story.

We did exactly this with the WSU internal documents.

The information contained in the documents was so damning that any journalist worth their salt would have done an injustice by not acting on them.

It was shocking for the Dispatch to be met with resistance at WSU. One would have thought the university would be proactive on the matter.

Instead, it chose not to respond to questions posed to it. WSU has still not officially responded to the Dispatch. 

Journalism exists to inform society. It is the duty of journalists to report on matters of public interest — good and bad.

It is most unfortunate that the journalist who wrote the story was singled out on social media and insulted, simply for doing his work.

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