If you have never heard of the TV series House of Cards, then skip some paragraphs.
The following is an extract from the online edition of the UK newspaper, The Guardian: “Why are all the House of Cards journalists so bad at journalism? Zoe and the gang can’t report, lack ethics and have the common sense of a hacker’s guinea pig. Somebody should fire them . . . House of Cards has no fewer than four journalists as fairly major characters. The problem is, likeable as some of them may be, they’re all awful at their jobs.”
Now, apart from the fact Zoe Barnes has the permanent look of a startled baby vervet monkey, she does seem to snoop around to get stories and make connections, as do her reporter colleagues. Impresses me. And, I may say, it is in complete contrast to the attitude of South African reporters, in particular, those who report on engineering matters. Let me quickly point out that I am not referring to reporters at Engineering News – I mean those who report on general issues and mess it up when they report on anything related to engineering. One can forgive them for their mistakes, but what cannot be forgiven is their slack attitude to stories and the way in which they write, without taking care to check facts.
In this regard, I also exclude the reporters who write about environmental matters – they just repeat the inaccurate facts they are fed. For example: “Sam Cook, the technical manager at the Hopefield wind farm, said Hopefield would generate enough electricity to power about 70 000 low-income households and 29 000 medium-income households. It has 37 turbines spread over 900 ha and a generating capacity of 66.6 MW . . . The same amount of electricity generated by coal would emit 195 000 t of carbon a year. Avoiding these carbon emissions by using wind energy was equivalent to taking more than 40 000 cars off the road.”
The reality: 70 000 homes, yes, but only if the wind farm produces full power of 66.6 MW all the time. It never has and never will. Some 195 000 t of carbon a year – which year? An earth year? Never! And 40 000 cars off the road? Rubbish.
No, the reporters are the ones in the following true incidents:
•
I discovered that, when the Houses of Parliament was asking for tenders for some electronic equipment, the tender went to somebody who had not even submitted an open tender. I told a reporter and gave him the details. He phoned an official at Parliament, who denied this, and then told me what Parliament had said. I said, hello, hello, read the evidence I have given you. Nothing happened.
•
I found out that the public address system of Cape Town stadium was so bad that it would be impossible to conduct effective crowd control in an emergency. I phoned an editor, who asked, are you sure? I said we had done tests. Oh, he said, have you told the client? I said, oh, yes, but they say they are going to do nothing. So, he said, why do you worry about it? Well, I said, good grief!
•
A tender was submitted for a very large project. The successful tenderer had not submitted all the documents required for tax compliance, had not filled out the ‘form of tender’ and was noncompliant in other ways. I told a reporter. He did . . . nothing.
And, thus, it goes on. It seems that the reporters are keener to report on some government embarrassment than on some real stories that are an indication of the state of the nation around us. Perhaps I am wrong and these three incidents are the only ones which have ever happened. But I think really not. But perhaps it is just Cape Town. Which reminds me of a story. A nuclear bomb is dropped on Gauteng, and it is flattened, horizon to horizon. It causes a small tsunami in False Bay. The Guardian, in London, runs this headline: ‘Thousands die in South African disaster. The Cape Daily paper runs this headline: ‘Two lost in False Bay tidal surge’ and, on the inside page, ‘Lions eliminated from Curry Cup’.