The bouffant haired Caxton Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, Anton Harber, was in wailing and breast beating mode when he wrote his column in Business Day last week.

“The darkest of clouds hangs over South African journalism this week” he began. Whatever can have happened I wondered. Has the dipsomaniac former editor of The Sunday Times got his old job back? Has Gwede Mantashe organised death squads to round up all those negative journalists he so loves? I read on and all Harber was talking about was some former reporter at the Cape Argus who accepted money from an ANC politician to assist in his “intraparty battles”. So what’s the big deal?

We all know that journalists are abysmally paid creatures with a social standing somewhere below that of child molesters and estate agents. So what harm is there in an enterprising young chap like Ashley Smith supplementing his meager income by writing a few positive things about Ebrahim Rasool (our new ambassador to Washington…or maybe not) and a few nasty things about his political enemies. Seriously Prof Harber, do you really think the readers of newspapers don’t believe this goes on all the time?

Harber then froths at the mouth a lot and suggests that the various toothless bodies which represent the media in this country should make it clear that “banishment is the minimum sentence for taking a brown envelope”. Have you ever read such load of sanctimonious codswallop?

First up, let’s immediately dispel the notion that the bodies representing journalism in this country exist to do anything other than to cover up dodgy behaviour within the industry; rather like any other professional body I suspect. There’s a strong code of “Omerta” among journos. Dog doesn’t eat dog my friends. So if you, Joe Public, go along with what you believe is a legitimate complaint about one of our saintly friends in the media you may get a polite hearing at best and a promise to look into the matter. In fact, I wouldn’t even bother to complain because a quick glance at the names of those elevated to positions of power should soon convince you that it’s the usual mix of spineless brown-nosers and political opportunists, few of them with lily white backgrounds despite their presumption to sit in judgement of others.

Then we move onto the heinous act of receiving money in return for writing certain favourable articles. This is deeply disturbing to Harber who goes on about truth and integrity and all that sort of thing. But, in his defence, we should remember that Prof Harber is now comfortably ensconced in academia where the leisure hours are generous, the consultancy work is lucrative and there is no such thing as a bottom line.

Now don’t get me wrong about all this. I am in no way endorsing Ashley Smith’s behaviour but I do need to say that the reaction from some members of the established media calls for an extra strength sickbag. All of those “it couldn’t happen in our organization” and “the fellow would be out of the door and I’d fight the CCMA later” type of statements. Are we seriously to believe from this that our newspapers and radio stations are the finest examples of probity? Not in my experience they aint.

I wrote for a publication where it was editorial policy not to write about a certain company that donated generously to the coffers. And quite right too. If we had we would all have been out of work. And back in my Sunday Times days it was quite clear that the advertisers held sway over the newspaper. It wasn’t a matter of them approving what was published every week. It was simply an unspoken agreement not to screw up a good relationship by printing potentially damaging articles. If you’ve got a large company signed up for a double page spread for the next 52 weeks you don’t go out of your way to deliberately upset them do you? And if you happen to be owned by a large mining house (as was once the case) how carefully are you going to tread when writing about the affairs of your parent? Money talks and with print journalism’s current parlous state it positively yells.

But it’s not only business interests that guide an editor’s hand. When I was sacked from the Sunday Times just over two years ago some wondered whether it was because I had angered the ruling party and Thabo Mbeki in particular. They ceased to wonder when the clownlike figure of Pallo Jordan (who was then Minister for Renaming Airports) emerged from his normal soporific state to make some comment about Englishmen defecating on his carpet. The cat was out of the bag. The Sunday Times had finally bowed to pressure from Luthuli House.

Readers of newspapers are not nearly as stupid as journalists like to believe. They know that behind every car review was a splendid launch with lots of booze and gifts. They know that no travel journalist is paid enough to fly to exotic locations and stay in luxury accommodation. They know that certain journalists are politically embedded and it probably doesn’t bother them unduly because they adjust their credibility when they read their work. What they don’t always realize is that editors and journalists are not the shining moral beacons they claim to be. So the happily married (sic) editor who publicly questions the sexual behaviour of the President while shagging one of his own staff members and setting her up in a flat for convenient rumpy pumpy sessions is far more deserving of our loathing than a junior reporter who augments his pitiful salary by writing what amount to press releases for politicians.

As Prof Harber should know (but maybe chooses to ignore), journalism in this country has more than its fair share of fornicators, sex pests, bullies, drug addicts, tax cheats, alcoholics and fraudsters (names and addresses on request Prof); all pretending to be moral guardians. Instead of fulminating about brown envelopes maybe Prof Harber should look closer at the dark clouds of questionable morality within the profession and wonder how that can best be dealt with.