Subject: Re: Ombudsman

To: helen@thru.org.za

From: smutss@sundaytimes.co.za

Date: Thursday, 11 September 2003 17:59:19 +0200

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Hi Helen

Hope you are well too.

I did receive the ombudsman's report and have distributed to the entire editorial staff.

The reporter who wrote the story has in the meantime left us but I did have a long discussion with the Durban bureau chief, who managed him. My feeling is that more responsibility rests with the burueau chief since he guides and trains staff, and is a gatekeeper to the stories that appear. He has promised to be more vigilant and to discuss the matter with his staff.

I also spoke to the deputy managing editor in charge of news, who manages the bureau chiefs and the main Johannesburg newsroom. She in turn also spoke to the Durban bureau chief, to emphasise the need to be fair to all parties concerned, to make sure stories are relevant and to chose sources who are credible. She too takes the concerns you raised in your complaint seriously. In fact, she rejected the story for the mainbody of the newspaper on similar grounds. She regularly discusses questions of ethics with the news staff.

I raised the matter with the editor and the managing editor to try to make sure that we have enough checks and balances to avoid running inappropriately researched stories. They were sympathetic to issues you raised.

I have also had numerous informal discussions with individual staff members - including one who disagreed with the ombudsman's finding.

I can't say that we will be able to stop all such stories since, as in every other industry, many of our staff are junior and senior managers don't always have the skills and experience to make the right judgment call. But we talk about issues as they arise and learn from our collective mistakes.

If it's not too much trouble, I would like to see a report of the exercise you did. We have a cadet training school and it might be worth passing it on to them for use in future courses. It might also be worth distributing to the staff.

We don't regard your intervention as confrontational - in fact, we welcome it. We aim to reflect our society fairly but are all too aware that we sometimes slip up. If readers and interest groups don't points these instances out to us, we would probably never notice.

All the best
Susan