‘My editor is unplayable,” complained a local journalist early this week, outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria, where Nelson Mandela’s condition had gone from “serious” to “critical” days before.

The editor in question had taken badly to a comment on Twitter about the nature of the coverage of Mandela’s health, and had phoned to berate the journalist. It was not an isolated incident.

“No, I’m saying there is nothing to report,” said another journalist on the phone, on the same day. “If there is nothing to report, and you don’t want me to report that there is nothing to report, what is it that you want me to report?”

At the same time, a field producer for a foreign broadcaster was trying to work out the distribution of crews between the hospital, the Mandela homestead in Qunu in the Eastern Cape, Mandela’s residence in Houghton, Johannesburg, and the Union Buildings, with far too few people to work with. 

The exchanges and hair-pulling frustration neatly illustrated a tension felt in newsrooms everywhere, that tension itself a manifestation of the problem faced by audiences. Everyone wanted to know more about Mandela’s state of health, but not in too much detail, not enough to feel that they were prying into the privacy of a greatly respected old man. Say too little, and editors (and readers) felt cheated; say too much and you risked crossing the line between good journalism and plain bad taste.

For others, the tension was of a more logistical nature. “No,” said one foreign correspondent down the line to his newsroom, “we do not know any more about Mandela. No, I don’t know for sure whether Barack Obama will be going to Robben Island, and if he does, whether media will be allowed. Yes, I read that story about Oscar Pistorius’s cellphone. Which one do you want me to cover? No, I’m at the hospital. Do you want me to go the American embassy? Yes, it’s close. No, they’re not talking to us.”

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Foreign correspondents
Many foreign correspondents had, the week before, started to shift their focus to the upcoming Obama visit to South Africa — Mandela had been in hospital for two weeks, with apparently no changes, so that story had petered out. 

Then, on Sunday night, the eyes of the world (and foreign news desks) turned back to South Africa with a vengeance, and many plans for the week were scuppered. Then nothing happened at the hospital again, and new plans had to be made on the basis of far too little information.

There were no easy choices, at least not for those news organisations with limited resources. Those that were less restricted threw money at the problem by flying in extra reporters and crew members, or finding more local stringers to help to carry the load.

But even for one of the biggest stories in the world, budgets are not infinite. With journalists and support crews sitting idle as nothing much continued to happen, some foreign correspondents were fighting a rear-guard battle against finance departments that were under pressure from managers who felt the news return was not justifying expenditure.

To be fair to the managers back home, coverage of Nelson Mandela’s health had been decidedly pedestrian, especially at first. 

Good journalism/bad taste line
In a country where corruption and criminality are often uncovered in startling detail, it took two weeks for any outlet to report that Mandela’s ambulance had broken down between his home in Houghton and the hospital, and that it spent more than half an hour stuck next to the side of the road. 

And that only because it was reported by an American outlet, albeit one that happened to employ seasoned local journalist Debora Patta.

The same storyline also saw American station CBS come in for the heaviest fire from those who felt coverage of Mandela had strayed across the good journalism/bad taste line.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the CBS story was public interest stuff, but in my mind details of Mandela’s medical condition, such as the state of his liver, I can’t see the public interest in that,” said Wits journalism professor Anton Harber, who published a blog post on the nature of the Mandela coverage shortly after CBS broke the news.

Neither Patta nor the CBS bureau in South Africa would comment on the criticism, nor on where they drew the line between good journalism and invasion of privacy. 

The BBC was clear on where they stood: “We do not want to be lied to, but neither do we expect to be given private medical information,” wrote their Johannesburg-based correspondent Andrew Harding on the corporation’s website. 

“And so, when a United States television network boldly declared this week that it had confirmed information about the state of Mr Mandela’s internal organs, we shook our heads, declined to retweet, and understood the genuine, bitter fury of [presidential spokesperson] Mr [Mac] Maharaj.”

Reporting on rumours
Also by Harber’s logic, reporting that Mandela was nonresponsive, or that his kidneys were functioning at only 50%, took things a step too far. But the fact that CBS implied that the presidency had been less than honest about Mandela’s state of health spoke to good, important journalism. 

“If it is the government saying one thing, and you believe that is not true? Yes, that must be challenged,” said Harber.

How does one go about that, and what tactics are permissible in searching for the truth on Mandela’s health? In many newsrooms in South Africa and beyond, that remained a question answerable only by example. Door-stopping family members with insistent questions? A bridge too far. 

Trying to convince doctors to provide clinical details not for publication? Possibly acceptable. 

Reporting on rumours with no corroboration? Only if they were spread on, say, social media, to the extent that they were already in the public domain, but then with great caution.

Judging by the relatively low level of public outrage, and the relatively high rates of satisfaction among readers, listeners and viewers, most media outlets – including foreign ones – seemed, all in all, to be navigating those waters successfully, if slowly.

“It’s an extraordinary situation where a hell of a lot of the world’s media are hanging around waiting for a story,” said Harber. “Considering that, people haven’t been doing too badly.”