THICK END OF THE WEDGE
PETER BRUCE: Journalism returns to digging and diving
Pauw’s book can reasonably be measured not only by the courage and brilliance he brought to it, but also by his decision not to double-check what his sources told him
Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Investigative journalists, I mean. If nothing else, 2017 has given South African readers a glimpse of the grand old days of journalism, when Hennie Serfontein exposed the Broederbond, or when Max du Preez and Jacques Pauw exposed Vlakplaas and apartheid’s killing squads. I always remember a debate on the Financial Times in the early ’80s, when I worked there. Should we, the question was posed, "do" investigations? The editor at the time, Sir Fredy Fisher, was dead against it. "The problem with investigations," he growled, "is that you can be wrong." That killed the debate until we hired a young Robert Peston as a reporter. Peston began writing scoops. It was intoxicating. Suddenly other newspapers were writing about what was in the Financial Times. We were on television. Once a steady ship, we became unpredictable and exciting. I’ve been thinking about those years. In 2016, we were struggling with state capture. How did the Guptas do it...
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