No method in this madness

This was a case of openness to the media gone mad. Or was there, as Shakespeare put it, method in the madness?

There is such a thing as the right not to be on television.

Surely that was a right that Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams had, when they faced a disciplinary hearing run by the United Cricket Board of South Africa.

A disciplinary hearing should be behind closed doors. I actually did not send a reporter to cover the event. Yet my company, Live Africa Network News, is the broadcast organisation that forced Judge King and the SA government to open up the cricket match-fixing commission to live radio (and by extension television) broadcasting.

There is a huge difference between the one and the other. A Commission is supposed to expose corruption to the public, and is paid for with public money. We have the right to know what is going on, and to hear the evidence with our own ears (though whether we also have right to see it with our own eyes via TV is not quite so clear).

In a disciplinary hearing, the idea is for an employer (the UCB) to decide if the actions of their employee(s) constitute a breach of their duties. It should therefore only be with the employees' permission that this process be held in public -- and televised. I have yet to determine how exactly the UCB went about getting this permission. I hope though they did not use the argument that Live Africa would have taken another court action to force the microphones in.

We would not have done so, and I believe would have failed to win such a case anyway.

All the public needed to know was the result.

If the result was dubious (as I think it was) then that is up to us media people to fight about later... and it's up to the King Commission to dig out any new facts.

I believe the bizarre decision to let the TV in to the disciplinary hearing was a blatant attempt to pretend that the UCB has developed a sudden love of openness and transparency. Interestingly, when we fought at the King Commission for our right to have microphones in the Commission, the UCB took the coward's way out: it neither supported nor opposed us. The same applied when we launched our court action.

Is there perhaps a hint of a white-wash (or black-wash) going on? Let it appear that the UCB is so open on things everyone knows about already -- i.e. Gibbs's and Williams's guilt to one offence -- while it keeps the lid firmly screwed down on much more that has not yet emerged?

How could I possibly even entertain so cynical a thought?

Paul Martin Cainer is CEO of Live Africa News Network, and writes regularly for rediff.com

Mail Cricket Editor