Beating around the Bosch

with

Dear Reader,

Today, we invite you to the other side of this screen, to sit at this chair, at this desk, with your fingers on the keyboard. Imagine for a moment that you are the writer, the journalist responsible for gathering a story and conveying it correctly. What you will find is something far less romantic than you might have imagined. Much of a journalist’s reality consists of obsessively refreshing email inboxes, hearing our phone calls ring into a void, answered only by its own echo, and scouring the most obscure corners of the internet for stories.

We experience overwhelming joy when an email notification lights up our screens, and the sound of our sources’ voices becomes the stuff of dreams. It is only after we have grovelled for scraps of information and dodged the temptation of PR-content landing seductively in our inboxes that we sit down to write something that is the closest to something true and meaningful. It is the moments between the blinks of a cursor and the turn of a page that we find ourselves wondering what on earth our profession actually is. 

Sometimes it feels redundant - taking information, rearranging it and presenting it to the public, neatly packaged. Sometimes it feels like what we write about doesn’t reach anyone, doesn’t change anything. A lot of the time we just send out stories and hope that they touch someone, somewhere. However, in the spirit of Press Freedom Day, let us romanticise our professions, for this is what we must do when their impact is not obvious. So, allow us to dramatise.

Imagine journalists as the hunter gatherers of society, chasing the story, and carrying it back to the people, ready for consumption. Just like hunters, we carry the hefty responsibility of making sure that what the people consume is not poisonous, that what we bring to the table serves the ends of nourishment and healing, not chaos and destruction. But we also cannot hunt without weapons. Freedom is our bow, the truth our arrow, and neither serves a purpose without the other.

In our many moments of doubt whether journalism really has any impact, we can count on wrongful incarcerations and violence against journalists to serve as a gloomy reminder that we must be doing something right.

Nicola Amon, newsletter editor

📸Some BTS from SMF News’ Bayanda Gumede:

This was my first time covering a sports game for SMF news. I spent the first half of the game watching from the media box, and at half time, I went onto the pitch to get photos for the article. I realised that it’s definitely not easy noting down the highlights of a game while trying to take photos for the story. Things got more difficult when I started having a bit of trouble with the camera that my colleague had shot with in the first half of the game. It was every photographer’s worst nightmare — a full memory card while in the middle of shooting. For every 30 photos I deleted, I only got one photo worth of space to shoot, so you can imagine my frustration. I had missed the opportunity to get action shots of three tries that had been scored because the camera would run out of memory the second someone crossed the try line. It felt like the universe was preying on my downfall. With the game reaching its end, I knew I had to be really selective with my shots, so I waited, with one eye in the viewfinder with a finger at the ready on the shutter release. In a twist of fate, I managed to get a great shot of Maties approaching the try line for the second to last time in the game.

Read the story here

📚Good reads from SMF News this week📚

• SU residence allocates gender-neutral blocks  

  

  Goldfields student residence at Stellenbosch University (SU) is currently undergoing the process of transforming two residence blocks, Wes Driefontein and Deelkraal, into gender-neutral spaces. Alison Hermanus spoke to a senior committee member at Goldfields about the process going forward to include queer students at the residence. 

• Maties scrum-half selected for Junior Springboks

  

  Ezekiel Ngobeni was selected to join the Junior Springboks’ touring squad. Rachel Jonker spoke to Ngobeni about his excitement over his selection and how he is looking forward to travelling to Australia. 

• Behuisingskostes styg in Stellenbosch-gemeenskap

  

  Daar is benoudheid onder Idasvallei-huiseienaars oor hulle stygende huispryse wat styg. Volgens Roy van Rooyen, ’n raadslid van wyk vyf in Idasvallei, is bekostigbare behuising ’n deurlopende probleem in die gemeenskap. Inwoners het hulle kommer oor die prys van eiendomme in die dorp uitgespreek tydens Stellenbosch Munisipaliteit se onlangse openbare deelname-vergadering in Idasvallei. Kara le Roux het met van hierdie gemeenskapslede gesels nadat hulle die onlangse openbare deelname-vergadering in Idasvallei bygewoon het.

Press freedom: a pressing matter, globally

🇷🇺Russia:

Evan Gershkovich, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal who was arrested in 2023 on espionage charges, remains imprisoned after his trial was pushed back to June, reports Voice of America.

Journalists Sergei Karelin and Konstanyij Gabov have also been detained on charges of “extremism” this week. According to BBC News, both were affiliated with Russia’s late opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.

Reuters reported on April 27 that Forbes journalist Sergei Mingazov was arrested on the charge of spreading false information about the Russian army. 

🇲🇽Mexico:

CBS News reported on 29 April that journalist Roberto Figueroa was abducted and found murdered this week. His death appears to be related to his reporting on drug cartel activity in the state of Morelos.

🇹🇳Tunisia:

Journalist Mohamed Boughalleb was sentenced to six months in prison for criticising the Tunisian government. The official charge reads “insult to civil servant”, according to AfricaNews.

🎶What we’re listening to:

Word of the Week

Behoove

~A duty or responsibility for someone to do something

“It behooves journalists to hunt for the truth”