| The
biggest casualty after Nairobi City Council askaris
hounded newspaper vendors out of town this week was the
Alternative Press. Among other reasons for the
crackdown, it was said that these publications litter
our streets. By Friday morning, there was hardly a leaf
of the so-called gutter Press in town.
Whether or not this crackdown
was government sanctioned, the verdict is that it was a
regress in democracy and the plight of free
speech.
All around the world, the
alternative Press is known to consistently get it wrong
with stories. Corridor rumours are enough excuse to
splash headlines like, "Ministers celebrate with
prostitutes after Budget speech," as one newspaper
recently had it. Little concern is given to the
discipline of verification, the benchmark of
professional journalism. It is such "factless" headlines
that so infuriate politicians, in particular, that they
itch to kill the alternative Press.
It is perfectly
understandable. This media’s consistent pattern of
publishing with impunity unverified stories that creak
under an overload of anonymous sources cannot find
respect among serious readers, even if such stories are
enough to dispatch mainstream media staff on the trail
of a major investigative story. The bottom line is that
in their rush for sales, the alternative media
frequently gets it all wrong.
Yet, readers and leaders may
find it unbelievable that even mainstream media may also
get it totally wrong — and do so lawfully. Within the
corridors of free speech, this is not only permissible,
it is entirely desirable.
The Daily Nation’s
story that President Kibaki had taken a fall down the
staircase at State House early this year, for example,
may have had questionable facts, but it was cause for
this view. With the anecdote of a president mincing
after landing on a hand he already fractured in an
earlier motor accident, it was a story hard to fault.
Besides, the Nation claimed solid anonymous
sourcing. Yet, following official complaint from State
House, the paper promptly issued an apology, thereby
unconsciously admitting it could have gotten the facts
wrong.
In a mature democracy, the
Nation should not have apologised, irrespective
of whether it had got its facts wrong. Why? Because all
ethical, hard-working and honest journalists have the
right to get the story wrong from time to time. A 1964
example involving the New York Times will
illustrate why.
At a time when Martin Luther
King was wreaking havoc with his civil rights movement
in the United States, a government official sued that he
had been defamed by a full-page advert published by the
Times. The advert accused the police of
mistreating non-violent protestors and harassing King.
What ensued was the celebrated New York Times Co.
v. Sullivan case. First, the court noted that the advert
actually had some false claims, which the Times
published. But rooting for the constitutionally
protected freedom of the Press, the court considered,
second, the case against the principle that debate on
public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide
open. Even if such debate is based on partially false
premises and includes unpleasant attacks on government
and public officials.
In our case, something
similar may have happened had the Nation declined
to apologise over the President’s story. Judges of
similar opinion may have ruled that the bigger picture
in the story was national public debate on the health of
the President, a debate that cannot be hindered. Such a
ruling would endorse our argument here: that it’s
unrealistic to expect journalists to guarantee the truth
of every factual assertion; because that would lead to
damaging self-censorship.
But the right to get it wrong
makes sense only if reporters who fumble on stories
acknowledge the errors and their publications recall the
pieces, such as the Nation inadvertently did with its
apology. Even the New York Times, the world’s
acknowledged leading newspaper, respects this tradition
— however long it takes to honour. In a 1920
editorial-page feature, for example, the Times
ridiculed rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard for
believing a rocket could operate in a vacuum. Almost
five decades later, the newspaper swallowed humble pie
with this humorous and self-effacing correction:
"Further investigation and experimentation have
confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th
century and it is now definitely established that a
rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an
atmosphere. The Times regrets the
error."
Given the half-truths and
falsities dripping particularly from the alternative
Press, which occasionally creeps into mainstream media,
newspapers would be unreadable if retraction and
self-correction were the norm. Applied sporadically,
however, this is an admirable tradition. More than a
tradition, it is a statement that journalists can’t be
expected to get it right all the time.
Yet, the mere thought that
the Press may legally claim the right to be wrong throws
a monkey wrench into a crucial ethical demand: that
journalism’s first obligation is to the truth. Not
quite. The right to be wrong is not a loophole through
which reckless and fraudulent journalists could escape.
Factual truth, which is what journalism pursues, needs
breathing space to survive.
Like the men behind the Nairobi
city askaris, we may not take to hugging the
gutter Press. But eliminate the right to get
it wrong and there would be no newspapers, no
broadcasts, and no Web sites.
Kodi
Barth teaches journalism at United States International
University-Nairobi.
If you have seen questionable
content in the press, write to kodi@kodibarth.com
Website: www.kodibarth.com/ | 
