Why no Crime Stats in South Africa?

One of the print publications in the area, St Francis Chronicle comes up with so
me answers:
Several people have asked me and many of my colleagues on other newspapers why w
e have so little Crime News. It’s a debatable subject right now but it has very li
ttle to do with the Editors. Every month the crime reports from the cops appear
to get smaller and smaller and smaller.
This trend started long before the Soccer World Cup. It actually started around
the time when there was a big exodus to countries down under; when South African
websites started springing up providing graphic details of ‘horror stories’ about c
rime and hijacks, particularly those in Gauteng. Editors also found that more ne
wspaper copies were sold if they splashed ‘horror crime stories’ on their front page
s.
With all this crime publicity, overseas tourists were scared to come to South Af
rica and investment dropped off. So law enforcement bodies were instructed not t
o not give out details of crimes to newspapers. And from then on crime reports i
n papers started thinning out with many incidents not reported.
When we ask the Police why, we are always told: “Instructions from the top.” And so
Editors have resorted to obtaining news from other sources, though the amount on
e can obtain is limited owing to time constraints.
This procedure intensified before the World Cup Soccer as a spate of negative ar
ticles or letters about crime would prevent tourists coming here. Most will reca
ll too that during the World Cup there were almost no reports of crime anywhere
as many mainstream Editors decided to can unpleasant articles until the Cup cele
brations were finally over.
Now that it’s almost a year since all the soccer fanfare, the withholding of crime
information details from newspapers still holds.
The plight of the economy, plus governmental and big businesses’ desires to bring
more tourists and investments to this country is still the main reasons why crim
e stats are being withheld from the public.
However, many believe that the public has the right to know and if we aren’t fully
informed about crime or other matters we are living in cloud cuckoo land. For e
xample, not being informed about the state of crime makes us liable to be attack
ed because if there doesn’t appear to be any serious crime; we don’t bother to prote
ct ourselves. They also believe if you witness something, it’s in everyone’s right t
o know so the problem can be corrected.
Source: St Francis Chronicle