MEDIA STUDIES
The Victoria Brittain drama (last act). She's failed
STEPHEN GLOVER
That action has now been ended on terms that should make the paper quite happy. Readers may recall that Mr Tsikata had taken exception to an article published by the Independent in June 1992. The piece, written from Ghana by Karl Maier, had mentioned in its penultimate paragraph that Mr Tsikata had been named by a spe- cial Ghanaian inquiry as the 'mastermind' behind the murder of three Ghanaian judges in 1982. The paper did not add that the Ghanaian attorney-general had subse- quently explained in detail his reasons for concluding that there was insufficient evi- dence to prosecute Mr Tsikata.
Mr Tsikata sued the paper but lost in the High Court and on appeal. The Indepen- dent won the argument on the basis of `qualified privilege'. Because the allegation against Mr Tsikata had appeared in an, offi- cial Ghanaian government document, the newspaper had been justified in repeating it. This represented a small landmark in English law. Having been refused leave to appeal to the House of Lords, Mr Tsikata decided to proceed against the Independent on the grounds that its original report was malicious. The case was set down for 26 October at the High Court, but with four weeks to go Mr Tsikata has decided to accept a settlement.
It does not appear to give him everything he wanted. The Independent's 200-word statement on Tuesday did not amount to an apology. In language which bears the hall- mark of my learned friends, the paper admitted that 'the sole witness against Cap- tain Tsikata subsequently withdrew his accu- sation just before his execution for the mur- ders'. (This is a rather heartless reference to the execution of Amartey Kwei who, con- fronted at his place of execution by Flight- Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, the Ghanaian head of state, retracted his evidence against Mr Tsikata before being shot.) The paper went on: 'We did not intend to suggest that Captain Tsikata was in fact guilty of these terrible crimes and we regret it if any reader understood that we did.'
As long ago as July 1993, the Independent offered Mr Tsikata a right of reply in which he could have mentioned that the Ghana- ian attorney-general had concluded that he had no case to answer. (The Independent did not know about the attorney-general's, conclusions when it published its original article.) So what more has Mr Tsikata got? He has secured an expression of regret on the paper's part if any inaccurate inferences were drawn, but he has not achieved the vindication he must have been hoping for. The paper has not said that it is absolutely certain that he is innocent of any involve- ment in these crimes, presumably because it is in no position to do so.
This case has cost Mr Tsikata a great deal. His own costs are estimated at some £250,000, while he has agreed to pay slight- ly more than half the Independent's costs, which will increase his liabilities by half as much again. My estimate is that he is out of pocket by about £380,000 — somewhat more than the £327,000 which swished through Victoria Brittain's bank accounts. I imagine those Libyan sources may be useful once more. Or will Mr Kojo Amoo- Gottfried, the former Ghanaian ambas- sador to Beijing who transferred £49,989 from a Swiss bank account into Ms Brit- tain's account on Mr Tsikata's behalf, dip into his kitty again? I don't expect that Mr Tsikata will have saved much money from the £4,000-a-year salary he earned as head of Ghana's security services.
I suppose this marks the end of the Tsika- ta affair. There are, alas, many unanswered questions. Who was responsible for the murder of those three judges? I don't expect we will ever know. Nor will we know for sure where the money paid into Ms Brit- `Marie is just a friend of the bloke I got the arm from.' tain's accounts really came from, though it is possible to make an educated guess. We don't know what Ms Brittain saw in a man who had run the security service of a singu- larly unpleasant regime, and we can only speculate as to why she was prepared to make so many unwise sacrifices for him.
But certain things we do know. We know that the Independent fought its corner hon- ourably, and offered Mr Tsikata a right of reply as soon as it learnt about the Ghana- ian attorney-general's report. We know that Karl Maier and the paper's then Africa edi- tor, Richard Dowden, were motivated not by malice but by a desire to tell the truth about a disagreeable regime in a continent where many politicians and some journal- ists are used to twisting the facts. We know that Ms Brittain tried to help a man who had served this nasty regime do down her own fellow journalists and another newspa- per. And, now that we have read the state- ment and heard the facts, we know that nei- ther she nor her friend Kojo Tsikata has really succeeded.
Writing in the Guardian, the paper's former editor Peter Preston criticises the British press for overhyping the Clinton videotape. He picks out the Sun, the Express, the Daily Mail, as well as the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, for censure. In his view, the American press was almost as bad. He writes, 'Reporters and pundits, gathering before the tape rolled, were so damned magisterial. This was the end of the road for the Presidency, the moment when the final tissue of mendacity was ripped away. But it wasn't, of course.'
How odd that he shouldn't have men- tioned the Guardian among those sinning newspapers. On 19 September — several days before the tape rolled — the paper led its front page with a story under the head- line, 'Clinton: now it's trial by TV.' Its cor- respondent Martin Kettle wrote from Washington in an excited (though, in my view, completely understandable) way. 1Republican leaders yesterday ordered] Bill Clinton's presidency to endure a humil- iating trial by television. The move sent the capital into a frenzy as the enormity of the decision, which could pave the way for the impeachment of a hitherto popular Presi- dent, sank in.' And so on. Does Mr Preston not look at his old paper?
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