Minefield's: Journalistic ethics and the Israeli conflict as seen in South Africa

I am not Jewish, nor am I Muslim. I do not understand how much the conflict in Israel means to South African Jews and South African Muslims.

This week at  taught me lot about that when I covered an incident of hate speech on campus for the University of Witswatersrand student paper.  I also learnt how hard being fair as a journalist really was.
Here is a breakdown of the story:

A year ago, The Palestinian Solidarity Committee invited a leading trade unionist from COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) to speak at their Israel Apartheid week. His name is Bongani Masuku.

His comments included:

“…as we struggle to liberate Palestine from the racists, fascists and Zionists who belong to the era of their Friend Hitler! We must not apologise, every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine. We must target them, expose them and do all that is needed to subject them to perpetual suffering until they withdraw from the land of others and stop their savage attacks on human dignity…”.


“… all who have not accepted or woken up to the reality that we now live in a democratic South Africa where racism or promotion of it is a crime, are free to leave the country. I repeat whether Jew or whomsoever does so, must not just be encouraged but forced to leave, for such a crime is so heinous it can’t be tolerated…”.


So in response a Jewish organisation, the Jewish Board of Deputies, complained to the Human Rights Commission (HRC). The HRC ruled that what Masuku said was hate speech. For the rest of the drama read the full story.

Doing this story was an eye-opener to the tensions that exist between  between the Wits Jewish students, the Wits Palestinian supporters (Muslims) and the black Wits political students who support Palestine.

It was also an eye-opener in terms of how hard it is to be a journalist that is fair and tells both sides of the story. I think it was easier for me to tell this story as I am not involved in Israel or in the ethnic groups.

Although I was amazed at how easy it is to find myself slightly being biased. I think one of my Jewish sources, Benji, is super cool, very charming and good looking and I had to keep checking I didn't favour his side of the story. He has gone out of his way to help me with stories before and he is so intelligent and lovely. Charm is powerful.

I always thought ethics were easy: tell the truth, get one's quotes right and don't acccept bribes.
But ethics are so much more subtle than that. It comes down to how one orders the story, which quotes one uses and the title and photos that one chooses. In short - how it is written.

All I had was my judgement and I already know that I felt a little biased by how nice the Jewish students were, how rude the trade union was and how unhelpful the Palestinian Solidarity Commitee was.

And then at a University bar on Thursday night, a long-term photojournalist tells me how often journalists are offered bribes when covering African stories and how his editor was once in on a plan with a long term source to offer him a bribe. Had the photojournalist taken it, he would have lost his job after years of working for this editor.

"The media chews you up and spits you out," he told me. "They don't teach you that at journ school," he added.

Pity they don't warn us. Pity we only had 2 or 3 lectures on ethics when I studied journalism last year. Not enough to help with stories like this one in which Jewish and Muslim students were so sensitive and so personally involved.

I am entering a minefield as I start my career as a journalist.