When "Experts" Aren't Experts: The Media's Growing Credibility Problem

It’s been a rather jaw-dropping week at the various commissions of inquiry. Viewers were spoiled for choice - what to watch, what to prioritise? Honestly, as a self-confessed liker of things, I completely understand the FOMO.

But amid the spectacle, Mary de Haas’s appearance before Parliament this week raised a far more sobering issue: the media’s reliance on so-called “analysts.” For years, De Haas has been a trusted go-to voice on violent crime in KwaZulu-Natal. A professor. An expert. An authority.

Except she isn’t. As it turns out, she never completed her PhD, and she is not a professor. She says she was too busy teaching to finish it. Yet she allowed the title to follow her for years, and the media, and the public, accepted it without question. From an ethical standpoint, she had a responsibility to clarify her credentials. She didn’t. And she isn’t the first.

We’ve seen this pattern before: individuals held in high regard who quietly let the myth of their expertise grow. Meanwhile, newsrooms are shrinking. Research desks - the very teams meant to verify credentials and strengthen reporting - are often the first to be cut. So perhaps it’s no surprise that anyone with a firm voice, a confident soundbite, or a few years in a related field gets elevated to “expert.”

Time pressures don’t help. When one outlet discovers a new voice, the rest of the media landscape follows, often without doing the most basic verification. The echo chamber takes over, and before long, we’re all quoting the same person without ever asking whether they should be speaking in the first place.

So who is to blame? And more importantly, what safeguards should be in place to prevent this from happening again? At minimum, newsrooms should verify academic credentials as diligently as they verify facts. They should disclose when someone is an activist, a commentator, or simply a long-time observer, not an academic expert. And audiences should demand better, too.

Because credibility is not a costume. And when the media blurs the line between genuine expertise and convenient commentary, the public is the one left misled.