WHEN THE TRUTH HURTS

Yesterday, we received a list of concerns from members of the William Pitcher College Student Representative Council (SRC) regarding an article published in the Times SUNDAY on January 16, 2022, titled ‘Pitcher students recruited for state sabotage.’

Essentially, they were seeking answers to three questions and two demands on a story regarding the reported participation of William Pitcher students at a summer  camp organised by the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS). The SRC is asking for a retraction of the story on the assumption that it was false and that we consult them in future on any matter touching on students at the institution. In response to these concerns, we ought to state from the outset that the most basic rule of journalism is to seek the truth and to get the facts right before publishing a story.  This is a tenet that has been adequately executed in this particular matter.

Their first demand is that we must reveal the names of the students who attended the CPS summer school in Piet Retief last year. This demand by William Pitcher students is self-defeating because it would place individual students in the spotlight and subject them to victimisation. Responsible journalism dictates that this is a demand we cannot and should not attempt to meet. Secondly, they want to know why the student body of William Pitcher was treated as a political party. Nowhere in the article do we refer or insinuate that the college body is a political party. We simply reported that some of them attended the summer camp at the invitation of CPS.

Thirdly, they want to know why we wrote a story without contacting them.The attendance of the camp was not by invitation of the SRC nor the administration of the college. This is a fact acknowledged by the SRC and the CPS on Monday. We could have got comment from either, but we are happy to engage the SRC in matters pertaining to student affairs in the future.  
The fourth issue is why we decided to quote the presence of Pitcher students only and not the other tertiary institutions. We were simply being accurate.

Institutions

The CPS document, from which we based our story on, specifically mentioned William Pitcher without being specific on the other institutions from which participating students came. We cannot alter the document. As a group of newspapers, we have done everything an objective reader would expect from us in demonstrating that this matter  of  William Pitcher College students attending a summer camp organised by the CPS, was factual. It was neither a fabrication nor a figment of our imagination. We have undertaken all the basic news reporting steps to establish the truth about the summer camp and reported accurately what the CPS leaders had to say about it. The source of our story was a document from CPS and this alone is enough to quash claims that it was false. It was the same document that detailed what the party was planning to do in its mission to demand political change in Eswatini.

Furthermore, the document was confirmed by Pius Vilakati, the International Secretary of the CPS, as genuine. That said, we do understand that having to face the truth really hurts sometimes. As a media organisation, we pride ourselves as being available at a fixed address for any query pertaining the veracity of our reports. We are aware that on certain occasions  we do get stories wrong when relying on third party information. When this happens, we will correct the article. However, this is not one of those occasions and we see no need for a retraction or apology.

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