Dear Readers,
Born
in
Jones
subsequently left
He was Moneyweb’s Mineweb editor until he diverted
$20 489 (About R200 000) due to Moneyweb by a Canadian firm into the
Mauritius bank account of P.J. News
Service, which just happened to be his own company. He only returned the money
after being threatened with a criminal prosecution.
He then committed the worst of journalist crimes. He used
his position as a recognised Business Times freelance writer to get back at Hog
with an article that described Moneyweb’s performance as “shambolic” with
“tumbling” advertising revenue etc. It could not have been more derogatory.
“The full might of the Sunday Times was brought to bear on
our small company with falsehoods published as fact and not so much as a
suggestion that we be asked for a response to some of the outrageous claims,”
Alec Hogg the founder of Moneyweb said at the time.
“My initial response was to ignore the nonsense. Surely
people would see through the axe grinding of a former employee who was forced
to repay R200 000 that he had stolen from our company.”
Noseweek South
In Moneyweb’s case he was no better. Noseweek reported he
offered Hogg a 30 cm space in the paper to give his side of the story. This was
cut to almost half in the editing and the frivolous headline: “Jim Jones a
naughty boy indeed,” told its own story of how seriously the paper regarded
what was a particularly unforgivable thing for a journalist to have done.
It was a disgraceful whitewash job, with the Ombudsman
showing his bias, like a distress flare in the middle of the night.
At the time Jones’ stories were all over the Business Times
together with his impressive byline. Then he became the willow the wisp of the
business section as it got smaller and smaller, disappeared for a time only to
reappear now and again at bigger and bigger intervals, but still in its hardly
noticeable form as if the paper was hoping nobody would notice he was still a
contributor.
As this incident showed the Sunday Times had morals of an
alley cat so its backing of a crooked reporter was to be expected.
Jones was 81 when he died of a heart attack at his home in
He also wrote that although the Business Day circulation
peaked under Jones’ Editorship the owners gave him the “push” because,
according to Jones’ wife Frances Potter they believed that editors should not
serve for more than 10 years. I find that story very difficult to believe. How
many newspaper owners get rid of editors when their papers are at their most successful?
Katzenellenbogen did give us some insight into Jones’
dubious side. The Financial Mail lost a court case over an article he had
written and he had previously been fired by this magazine for taking time off
to freelance without permission. In spite of this unacceptable record he still
got the job as Editor of Business Day.
Here is the link to the first
story I wrote about Jim Jones six years ago.
https://dearjon-letter.blogspot.com/2017/09/exposed-sunday-times-love-affair-with.html
Regards,
Jon
P.S. I never expected to find that the Sunday Times, a
paper I once worked for as an investigative journalist, had sunk to the level
of some of the crooks I was after.
