So, remove the negativity and speak positively to project a nation that is doing something about its challenges. The balance needs to be felt.
Zweli Mkhize, Speech to SANEF 5 July 2015
Journalism ethics can be complex at times, but it can also be elementary. It could be summed up in four basic guidelines: maximise truth, minimise harm, act independently, and be accountable to the public. Rampedi failed dismally on each of these counts.
Herman Wasserman, Tembisa 10: Car-crash journalism 18 June 2021
It could be argued that an editor’s first duty is ensure a good return on the investment of shareholders thereby maintaining the continued employment of him or herself and colleagues.
Zweli Mkhize’s plea on behalf of the Zuma faction of the African National Congress (ANC) for more patriotic news from the South African media in 2015 is ironic in retrospect given the role that amaBhungane has played in exposing his role in the Digital Vibes scandal.
Herman Wasserman’s article on the basic tenets of ethical journalism in the context of Piet Rampedi’s Tembisa 10 reporting was published a week before it became known that Sekunjalo’s ‘Rogue Unit’ reporter had got both the name and the age of the purported ‘decuplet’ mother wrong.
It turns out that she is 48 years old which makes the chances of her giving birth slender and giving birth to ten babies outside the realms of possibility in the context of current medical science.
Positive coverage
Governing political parties naturally want the media to project them in a favourable light and some, as our own media history shows, don’t hesitate to clandestinely use taxpayers’ money to achieve positive coverage.
An obvious example was the Info Scandal in the late 1970s which led to the effective political demise of the most influential politicians of that era, B J Vorster and Connie Mulder.
Matthew Blackman and Nick Dall have done an outstanding job in pulling the Muldergate threads together in their recently-published book ‘Rogues’ Gallery – An Irreverent History of Corruption in South Africa from the VOC to the ANC’.
They reveal that then-Finance Minister, Nico Diederichs, diverted R7.5 billion at today’s value from a Defence Force slush fund to finance Eschel Rhoodie’s project to create favourable publicity here and abroad for the apartheid government. An equivalent of half a billion rand by today’s value was given to Louis Luyt to establish The Citizen.
Fast forward to 2013 and about half a billion rand is diverted from the Public Investment Corporation by its CEO, Dan Matjila, to fund the purchase of the largest group of English newspapers in the country, Independent Media, so as to give favourable publicity to the Zuma faction of the ANC.
That amount, with accumulated interest, has now grown to more than a billion rand and the ‘other Mandela doctor’ has shown no publicly-declared interest in amortising this debt default.
At least the Rhoodie project left us with a sterling newspaper in The Citizen whereas the ANC-promoted purchase of the Independent titles has left us with the very real possibility that few of them will survive.
It has also resulted in the sort of ‘News Manipulation on Steroids’ that has brought South African journalism into disrepute all over the world.
R20 million backhander
How ironic too, that those who have accused rival media companies and their reporters of ‘Stratcom’ journalism should now be revealed as the recipients of a R20 million backhander from a security police slush fund to clandestinely purchase favourable publicity to the detriment of the country as a whole and its tax payers in particular. This exactly replicates the money laundering of the National Party to achieve the same goal – what it regarded as patriotic reporting.
Of course, individual brown-envelope ANC politicians do their bit in using taxpayer money to purchase favourable publicity for themselves and their ‘Good Story to Tell’ and ‘A Better Life for All’ employers at Luthuli House.
It is self-evident that the financing of The Citizen by the National Party and the ANC-facilitated Sekunjalo Independent Media purchase is small change when compared to the havoc wrought by the ANC’s promotion of the Gupta media companies.
Gwede Mantashe’s insouciant admission at the Zondo Commission that the ANC had purchased positive news coverage through its support of the Zupta media empire belies the negative impact the de facto Luthuli House media policy has had on the country.
Moegsien Williams headed the Gupta propaganda arm as detailed in Rajesh Sundaram’s book, Indentured.
Sundaram told the Zondo Commission that working conditions were ‘subhuman’ at the Gupta media company and that Jacob Zuma played a significant role in framing its news policy and coverage.
The New Age newspaper and the ANN7 television news station as the Gupta propaganda arm facilitated the snouting by them of R16 217 793 047.18 at the state capture trough, according to the evidence by Paul Holden at the Zondo Commission.
According to Holden the cost borne by you and me, however, in terms of what the Jacob Zuma regime spent on Gupta-tainted contracts, was R57 billion.
Somewhat suspect
Moegsien Williams now utilises his experience on the Appeals Panel of Iqbal Surve’s internal ombud system which was reconstituted after the previous system was revealed to be somewhat suspect.
All of this was a consequence of Survé following the lead of the Guptas and withdrawing the Independent Media newspapers from the oversight jurisdiction of the SA Press Council. This happened at a time when his newspapers and their Fake News and ethnically divisive content were facing an unprecedented level of public revulsion.
The third element of the ANC’s campaign to control the media narrative was the hijacking of the SABC.
The apartheid-era SABC executives had left the SABC in a sound financial position.
Things changed drastically for the worse thereafter and, because corruption, incompetence and indolence are an integral part of the ANC’s illegal deployed cadre system, the ‘transformed’ SABC soon needed two multi-billion rand bailouts.
Two books, The SABC8 by Foeta Krige and My Father Died for This by Lukhanyo Calata detail the tragic consequences of Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s manic and, at times, bizarre tenure.
As the unspeakable Faith Muthambi put it at the time:
“Baba loves Hlaudi, he loves him so much, we must support him.”
Nothing like this happened at the SABC during the apartheid era.
I can testify to that because I started work there in 1977 and asked for early retirement in 2005 without other employment in prospect because of pervasive corruption, news censorship and the unaddressed abuse being suffered by staff at the state broadcaster’s Cape Town news office.
All of this can be traced back to 1997 when ANC spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe, writing in the ANC publication Umrabulo, defined transformation as “extending the power of the National Liberation Movement over all levers of power: the army, the police, the bureaucracy, intelligence structures, the judiciary, parastatal, and agencies such as regulatory bodies, the public broadcaster, the central bank and so on.”
As I write this article, the news has just broken that Jacob Zuma has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment.
Where does this leave the Zuma faction’s supporters at Sekunjalo Independent Media who have waged an intense war against the CR17 faction’s anti-corruption drive – see here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here?
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend