Editor of the Sunday
Advertiser aka Sunday Times,
I feel terribly sorry for you. They take you
from that piddling little Daily Dispatch (Circulation
25 000) in East London (population260 000) and make you Editor of the
country’s top selling national paper, the Sunday
Times (Circ. 260 000) that operates out of Johannesburg
Ever
since then you have been the face of record breaking Sunday Times apologies.
You
were just getting into the hot seat in December 2015, when the Press Ombudsman
gave you his Christmas and Welcome to the
Sunday Times present. It was his ruling that the ‘rogue unit’ expose` about
the SA Revenue Service (SARS) was rubbish. It had been running for months and
he order that your new paper must retract everything and apologise in writing.
One has to wonder what really went on here. Pearlie
Joubert, a member of your paper’s investigative team at the time, says she was
isolated when she began to question what was going on. What was the motive for
ignoring the very perceptive alarm bell she was ringing? Could it have been
something more than just a front page lead?
When she could not get her message through, she very
bravely resigned.
She’s was the real hero of that disgraceful chapter in the
history, of a once proud newspaper. What she did is actually the front page
lead for next week, but of course you will never print it.
Did you know at the time that you were being brought right
across the country just to be thrown among the Great Whites, without a
cage, almost straight away? Soon afterwards you had to explain that whole page
apology that appeared in April 2016.
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| The REAL HERO Pearlie Joubert: She's laughing here but it was no joke on the Sunday Times |
At the time your appointment was announced Andrew Bonamour,
Times Media (Now Tiso Blackstar – the Group changes it’s name more often than a
chameleon changes colour) CEO had this to say about the outgoing editor Phylicia
Oppelt, under whose watch these lies occurred: “We are delighted that Phylicia
will remain with the group and help drive the exiting changes across the
titles.”
What? Just when she
had so completely messed up. Why wasn’t she asked to explain how it happened,
instead of you, in that whole page apology? And where is she now - still
driving “those exiting changes?”
Today I see you are at it again, apologising once more for
cock-ups that occurred even before Oppelt was the Editor. Now it’s all about
the 2011 Police “death squad” lies that appeared when Ray Hartley was the
Editor.
These, as you say, “created the impression that Gen Johan
Booysen was operationally in charge of the unit, and by association directly
and personally responsibly for the killings.”
Only a trivial libel that just happened to be completely untrue.
You gave Booysen a lot of space to have his say. Unfortunately
this shows how meaningless these apologies of yours are, if your paper and
other sections of the Tiso Group go on employing the same journalists, who have
proved conclusively that they can be relied upon to get it wrong in a big way.
The scribes mentioned in the bylines on the stories you are
apologising for now are Stephan Hofstatter, Mzilikazi wa Africa
and Rob Rose.
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
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| Breaking News |
In having his say Booysen told us
that he had to contact the Editor Hartley to “demand to be heard” to give his
side of the story, when that’s one of the basics of journalism that every cub reporter gets told: Always get both sides
of the story.
Hofstatter then comes to see him
and they had a recorded teleconference with Wa Africa. Booysen tells them that
the photographs they had of dead suspects had nothing to do with the story they
are doing. He also told them that he knew their “sources” and that they were
being investigated by the Hawks.
Undeterred your ace investigators “evidently made no effort
to verify the facts with the institutions” Booysen had referred them to.
“Instead the versions of the suspects under investigation were published,”
Booysen went on.
This Don’t let the
facts spoil a good story team then ensured that the gruesome pictures of
the bodies appeared with their story when, as Booysen had told them, they had
absolutely nothing to do with it.
How
brainless was that? These were supposed to be senior journalists behaving like naughty kids.
Your
apology today, which is full of excuses, loses any value it might have because
you have including something that is clearly not true. What good is there in
saying Sorry for our lies and then
explain why with another one.
“We
were in pursuit of nothing but the truth and we were not motivated by
political, commercial or personal interests,” you told readers. “We stood to gain
nothing from reporting on these issues, but merely fulfilling our constitutional
obligation to inform you”(Isn't "were" missing somewhere?).
What
a lot of guff. Is the Sunday Times
now a charity? Does it not need money to exist? Your paper was purely motivated
by getting exclusive, sensational stories that increase readership and the
profits that flow from that.
I
know we are supposed to have a very good constitution, but I can’t find the
section that says newspapers have a duty to inform us. It’s probably just me. I
can’t see for looking.
Bongani,
I accept that you can’t be blamed for the fictitious scoops that appeared
before your time, but some odd things have happened while you’ve been in
charge.
For
a start how can you still have Wa Africa doing investigations for your paper
and having regular front page leads? He
should have been bowled out as soon as it was apparent that the police death
squad story was rotten to the core.
He
was still there after Jacques Pauw’s book The
President’s Keepers came out in October 2017. In the book he accused Hofstatter and Wa
Africa of “Helping Zuma’s keepers to destroy the finest law enforcement
institution in the country.” He was talking about a group of people in SARS who
lost their jobs as a result of the “rogue unit,” to which your paper gave credence to.
There’s
perhaps a follow up book for him: The
Rogue Unit at the Sunday Times – the inside story.
Then
too you should have known that freelance Jim Jones was a crook when the
Business Times, your business section, continued to use him.(love affair with a crook) You were also very
much in charge when that whole page, paid African National Congress anti
Democratic Alliance plug, masquerading as a news story, appeared.(dropping moral standards)
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| The Terrible Twins - Hofstatter & Wa Afrika |
I
know you don’t decide these things but the management of your group must also
be censored for making Rob Rose the Editor of the Financial Mail and keeping
Hofstatter on reporting for the this publication and Business Day. His excuse for going
astray was that they were “under pressure for scoops.” This is the life of
every reporter, so imagine what it would be like if they all come up with
fairytales.
Both Rose and Hofstatter have written allegedly factual books about shady goings on. One has to wonder now, how much of these are actually fiction.
Both Rose and Hofstatter have written allegedly factual books about shady goings on. One has to wonder now, how much of these are actually fiction.
Regards,
Jon,
the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman, who tries to keep his factual fiction to a
minimum. I must add that my only motive in writing this blog is to put the
world right without any thought of being rewarded.
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