HOW THE SUNDAY TIME'S MORAL STANDING KEEPS DROPPING

Dear Bongani Siqoko Editor of the SundayTimes,

Anton Harber, journalism
professor

            You began you tenure in the hot seat in 2016 with a whole page apology for the lies your paper had been telling about the so called “rogue unit” at the South African Revenue Service (SARS). Alright I accept that this did not happen under your watch, but that did not excuse it.(lotto journalism)

            It clearly caused the downfall of your predecessor Phylicia Oppelt, who suddenly disappeared never to be heard of again?

            Subsequently I revealed that your Johannesburg based paper was once again employing Jim Jones, a known thief, as a freelance writer for your business section (Business Times). And when I asked you to undertake that this would never happen again you didn’t even have the courtesy to reply. (love affair with a crook)

            The latest serious indictment of your paper’s integrity has just appeared in your 28 January edition.

            A whole page (you never do these things by halves) on Cape Town’s drought problems headed Special Feature gave no hint to your readers that it was in fact a Department of Water Affairs advertisement paid for with the taxes of many of your readers. You hoodwinked them completely.

            The way it was written could not have given anyone the impression that it was anything else other than a genuine Sunday Times report by one of your journalists.

            What else would they have thought when they read “Another document given to the Sunday Times” etc?

            It was a huge puff for the African National Congress (ANC) government’s Minister of Water and Sanitation, Nomvula Mokonyane.  As you know the national government is mandated to supply bulk water to the provinces which then have to distribute it.

            The issue is complicated because both the Western Cape Province and Cape Town are led by the Democratic Alliance (DA), much to the annoyance of the ANC.

            This advertisement in editorial clothing blamed the DA for “typically being at loggerheads with the ANC-led national Department of Water and Sanitation.” Above this the headline had another dig at the DA with “Water Minister tells DA finger-pointers to dry up.”

            While your paper was deceiving its readers with this no doubt very expensive (a couple of million at a guess) addition to your coffers, the worried people of Cape Town were holding thumbs that the projected April Day Zero, when the taps are scheduled to run dry, will not materialise.

            In the Daily Maverick Anton Harber slammed the paper you head for its deceit with some very strong language. And if anybody should know about newspaper ethics he should as the Caxton Professor of Journalism at Wits University.

            He wrote that your paper contravened “every principle of journalism, every code of conduct.” It could not get much worse than that yet he added that by not saying the page was sponsored it was a “dangerously misleading, politically-laden, one-sided, unfiltered opinion.”

Bongani Siqoko

            Asked for an explanation you did what so many of our political heads have been doing lately when grilled at various inquiries. Somebody else did it. The page was changed without your knowledge, you told Harber.

            You’ve got no excuse now. Unlike the “rogue unit” series this one happened when you were well and truly established in the editor’s chair

            Getting back to the edition of your paper that started this latest controversy it would seem that you are completely oblivious to threats to newspapers from social media and the internet. Finding something new for readers must be a nightmare for daily papers and even harder for ones like yours that only appear once a week.

            Surely that must make it even more imperative that your staff make a much greater effort to come up with something off beat so that as much as possible of your paper is not old hat when people get it on Sunday.

            There were 28 pages in the main part of the edition I am referring to and of these three were devoted to the Cape Town water crisis that had already been done to death for weeks. To compound this overkill the page that followed that controversial advertisement was broadly speaking an echo of the advertisement, this time as an actual report by your staff member Bobby Jordan. He presumably did not know about the skulduggery behind the “Urgent plans to avoid Day Zero” spread opposite his contribution.

            Then you also totally over did it with tributes to jazz great Hugh Masekela that took up the whole of pages 3, 15 and 16. He died on the Tuesday in the week that your paper was published so by the time the Sunday Times came out there must have been very little that had not yet been said about him in all forms of the media.

            Even your front page lead about how the Gupta brothers milked R220-million of government money earmarked to upgrade poor farmers in a dairy project had a touch of “Oh not that again”.

Mzilikazi wa Africa

            That too highlighted your paper’s dubious morality. Among the three names in the byline (using more than one journo to write so many of your stories shows a lack of confidence in their abilities and is tailor made for mistakes with one blaming the other) was that of Mzilikazi wa Africa, who was so discredited in Jacques Pauw’s  book The President’s Keepers.

            He was one of your three ace investigative reporters responsible for that SARS “rogue unit” fiasco that Pauw blamed for “helping Zuma’s keepers to destroy the finest law enforcement institution in the country.” (sources dilemma)

            In spite of this he is still on your investigative team apparently. He is the only one of the three still working for you. Like continuing to employ Jim Jones this shows your paper’s total lack of any acceptable standard which can only lead to more apologies and more people wondering if your paper is worth buying.

            As the old saying goes: You get judged by the company you keep.

            Your sister paper The Times that kept your group’s flag flying during the week was recently dumped in the rubbish bin as rising costs forced it to go digital. Do you know how well that’s doing now because I can not afford a lawyer to go on reading it? (online shocker)
            Could your paper be going the same way? Do you think that repeating stories that most people have already heard with hardly any new angle is the best recipe for selling newspapers in this digital age, when virtually everybody can be a reporter or a photographer and have their work sent around the world in seconds.

            Also if people lose faith in your paper’s ability to tell the truth what’s left? Fake news might keep you going, but not for long unless you happen to be Donald Trump.

            Regards,

            Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman who once worked for the Sunday Times in the days when the editor had this old fashioned idea: You got fired if you spiced up an expose` with fiction.

            

PRESS COUNCIL'S SPECIAL PROTECTION FOR MEDIA LIES

Dear Newspaper Readers,

Susan Smuts

          Lies, lies and more lies in a newspaper puff for itself are perfectly acceptable if they are classed as “comment” according to the Code of Conduct of the South African Press Council

          This was what Susan Smuts, acting on behalf the Johannesburg based Sunday Times, relied upon after I complained to the Press Ombudsman about an Editorial headed Our commitment to the truth is absolute published last month which contained numerous statements of fact that were not true.

          The Council has been the self regulating body for the South African Media industry for the last 40 years and as such has been far from a glowing example of how to administration the best justice. It’s hardly surprising then that its Code of Conduct has a distinct Media bias.

This is what part of the Code, which is an example of baffling muddled thinking, has to say about what it describes as Protected Comment.

          “The media shall be entitled to comment upon or criticise any actions or events of public interest. This is protected even if extreme, unjust, unbalanced, exaggerated and prejudiced, as long as it expresses an honestly-held opinion; is without malice; is on a matter of public interest; has taken fair account of all material facts that are substantially true and is presented in such a manner that it appears clearly to be comment.”

          In this case the Editorial certainly qualified as being “extreme, unjust, unbalanced, exaggerated and prejudiced.” So how can it possibly be “in the public interest” to allow this in a national Sunday paper with millions of readers. How can the Ombudsman decide if a publication is expressing “an honestly held opinion” unless he is a mind reader?     

          Another obvious flaw in the Protected Comment definition is that if an article contains those deplorable characteristics like “unjust, prejudiced” etc how can it be “without malice”?

          From my own experience I can conclusively say that the Sunday Times did not take a “fair account of all material facts” when compiling this Editorial.

          It started by referring to a particular investigation the Sunday Times had done and then went on to praise the way the paper in general had always operated with false statements such as:

1.    “We want to reassure you, our readers, and the public at large, that we adhere to and practise the highest standards of ethical and principled journalism.”

2.    “We have always (take special note of this word) been bound by a code of ethics and acted within the law, and have respected public expectations. We have been conscious of and responsive to concerns or complaints regarding anything that appears in this paper as part of our public accountability system.”

3.    “Our journalists, editors and other editorial staff are expected to - and have (another word of special note) – operated within these ethical, legal, institutional and professional bounds.”

4.    “All these form part of our values, ethos and our social contract with our readers.”

5.    “We have never abused your trust, and never will.”

6.    “We will never forget that we derive our mandate and legitimacy from this public trust. It is required of us that we exercise our power, mandate and duty with the utmost care - ethically and responsibly, holding ourselves to the same standards we expect of others.”

7.    “We constantly remind ourselves that our conduct must never be motivated or influenced by anything other than the public interest. Therefore any insinuation that we have been swayed by anything other than the public interest is baseless.”

Ironically within days of this Editorial appearing the Press Ombudsman ruled that the paper’s reports on that expose` the Editorial had referred to were “inaccurate, misleading and unfair.” This alone made nonsense of much of what was claimed in the Editorial, even if my own experiences were ignored.

          Details of these, which I listed in my complaint to the Press Ombudsman, are contained in an earlier post sunday-times-badly-needs-truth-drug.html .

          When I logged my complaint to the Council on its online form I never received anything to formally acknowledge it. About three weeks later I sent an email complaining about this to somebody called Khanyi Mndaweni who was first in the email list on the Council’s website.

Latiefa Mobara 

          A week later Latiefa Mobara replied saying she could not assist me as my complaint “did not breach any sections of the Press Code”.

She referred me to an email she had received from Susan Smuts which stated: “The complainant does not make out a case for us to answer in terms of the Press Code. The editorial, which is comment, did not deal with any of the matters he seeks to attach to it. We ask you to reject the complaint.”

Sorry Susan as most of the Editorial referred to the way your paper had always conducted itself the matters I attached to it certainly did apply. 

Neither email disclosed who these people were. I had to find out for myself. It turns out that Mobara is a former journalist who has the impressive title of Public Advocate. She has been described as the person who acts as the “eyes and ears of those who seek to rectify the injustice of false facts.”

Well she certainly made no effort to do this in my case.

From what I could make out she is the general dogsbody who sifts through complaints to make sure the Ombudsman is not unduly burdened.

Smuts on the other hand is not only the Legal Editor of the Sunday Times but is or was a Press Representative on the Council’s Panel of Adjudicators as well - higher up I assume in the Council’s chain of influence than Mobara.

Mobara didn’t even stick to the Code which was the basis for her ensuring that my complaint didn’t get as far as the Ombudsman Johan Retief.

Under a Settlement by the Public Advocate heading it states that she has to try and obtain a settlement between the parties after getting a response to the complaint from the publication concerned. If a settlement is not possible the matter has to be referred to the Ombudsman for adjudication.

But all she did was dismiss my complaint herself by accepting Smuts’ version.

How questionable is that especially in view of Smuts’ cosy connection to the Council.

The paper’s claims to have been honest forever were debunked completely in 2008. That was when its reporting standards had reached such a low ebb that it appointed a four person independent panel headed by former Mail and Guardian Editor Anton Harber to find out what was going on.

The muck ups had forced it to make embarrassing retractions in relation to some of its most sensational 2007 and 2008 stories.

The Harber Inquiry produced a long list of recommendations in an 88 page report. A 900 word summary of this appeared on the TimesLive website in December 2008, but the paper was evidently too ashamed to let us all see the entire findings.

In 2011 freelance Michelle Solomon’s Daily Maverick’s article Sunday Times and Me disclosed that even through the Promotion of Information Act she was unable to prize the full report out of Avusa, the company that owned the paper at the time and subsequently became the Times Media Group.

She began with this telling indictment of her profession:

“As a young journalist, I am still struggling to understand why there is such a gap between what we, the media, preach and what we actually do and why it is considered so natural.”

She quoted Harber, the Professor of Journalism& Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, as saying the company was “being silly” by not releasing the full report.

“The Sunday Times should set an example for the kind of openness and public accountability they expect from others,” he told her.

He added that he was disappointed that so few of the panel’s recommendations had been implemented.

He and his colleagues had to sign a confidentiality agreement before beginning their work. So from the start the Sunday Times was determined to do everything possible to ensure its dirty washing never got hung out on the line.

This is how Michelle Solomon ended her Daily Maverick
article

HOW MANY PEOPLE WHO DON’T BENEFIT FROM IT WILL AGREE THAT POLICING YOURSELF IS AN ACCEPTABLE FORM OF JUSTICE? IT’S DEPLORABLE THAT THE PRESS, WHICH IS QUICK TO TELL OTHER PEOPLE HOW TO RUN THEIR LIVES, HAS BEEN ALLOWED TO HIDE BEHIND ITS OWN SELF PROTECTION SHIELD FOR SO LONG.

This is the "judgement" I finally got from the Ombudsman Johan Retief via Mobara and my reply.
 It is similar to the brushoff I got from the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) when I
 complained about the dubious ads in The Citizen newspaper 
(http:citizens-aladdins-cave-of.html)

NO WONDER THE SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN THREATENING TO APPOINT A STATUTORY MEDIA TRIBUNAL TO CONTROL THIS INDUSTRY THAT CONSIDERS ITSELF SO SPECIAL.

Regards

Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman who tells it like it is.

P.S. This entire Post of mine is PURE COMMENT, so that lets me off the hook if anything might be slightly wrong, completely wrong or has absolutely no basis at all. This is according to Paragraphs 5.1 to 20.4 of the POOR MAN’S PRESS OMBUDSMAN’S CODE OF CONDUCT.     

TV & RADIO STAR UNATHI POSTED ON SWEARY WOMEN'S WALL OF SHAME

Dear Ladies,

Unathi - no joke now

          By ladies I mean those of you who don’t feel the need to use vulgar language to attract attention.

          Why is it that an increasing number of females seem to think that this kind of uncouth behaviour is the in thing to do?

          Is it their lack of self esteem? Is it a power thing to give the impression they have the strength of a man, or what?

          My theory is that in most cases it’s purely a lack of class. They don’t know any better and when it appears on Twitter and the like it gives them a weird thrill by having their name up in lights.

          It could also be that social media now provides a shield that gives people the courage to say things they would never have the gumption to say to anyone face to face.

          Why oh why do they find it necessary. There are no pluses. Apart from generally tarnishing their image and showing up their marked lack of common sense it can so easily lose them their job. And being on the internet for this is a millstone that can drag them down forever.

          By far the most widely used word by these birds, who don’t give a thought to the ramifications before fouling their own nest, is FUCK.

          Would they feel outraged if some guy came up to them and asked for a F… because this kind of talk certainly encourages this kind of approach.       

          

Unathi again laughing or crying?

Unathi Msengana, a presenter on the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) MetroFM radio station and a judge on pay TV M-net’s Idols SA show, stepped into it up to her ears earlier this month with a disgusting Twitter rant against a 19 year old student.

          It included the liberal use of the F-word.

          What started it all was when Unathi joined the controversy that was raging over the treatment of Blacks at the University of Stellenbosch. A relic of the country’s previous whites only Afrikaner government it made Black students feel isolated because Afrikaans was the main language which a lot them didn’t understand. They wanted to be taught in English.

          Unathi unintentionally turned the pot up to boiling by pointing out the obvious on air, and that was that Black students must have known about the university’s policy when they enrolled there.

          That set Twitter off with the UnathiBeLike hashtag. What were presumably mainly Blacks believed that she was supporting the Stellenbosch model. Her main antagonist was Palomino Jama, a student at the English speaking, liberal University of the Witwatersrand. 

          She tweeted: “Wife gets beaten by husband. Unathi: Why didn’t you become a lesbian? You married him knowing men could be abusive”

          She subsequently claimed she was being sarcastic and didn’t expect Unathi to take this personally.

          But that’s exactly what the star did. In private messages to the girl’s Twitter account Unathi let her lack of acceptable behaviour all hang out. “Do you think insulting me, my marriage and my sexuality is going to change your situation? You’re a fucking idiot if so… you’re fucking delusional if you think you can get personal. Fuck your stupid mind. No amount is going to change our realities. You psycho bitch. Fuck you twice over.” 

           A day later Unathi issued a statement explaining that her outburst was because she had been “criticised in ways that I felt badly violated my personal life and beliefs. I wish to publicly apologise for my choice in language,” she concluded.

          This didn’t stop the SABC, the public broadcaster from doing the right thing by suspending her. At the time of writing this the Corporation was still mulling over what to do with her.

          In an understatement its spokesman Kaizer Kganyago said her behaviour “tainted the station’s image.”

          What the SABC did is exactly what M-net should have done. But it didn’t. It took the easy way out by accepting her apology and allowing her to continue as an Idols SA judge as if nothing had happened. Piously it added: “M-net wishes to reiterate that it does not condone the use of offensive language and will take more serious action should such an incident occur again.”       

          Had Unathi been a White I wonder if they would have taken such a lenient view of what she wrote. It was particularly deplorable because of the bad example she was setting for the young people she is being called upon to judge in the search to find the best singer in the country.

          Now in its 11^th season Idols SA is based on Britain’s Pop Idol contest.

Du Plessis

          The first woman to qualify for my Wall of Shame in April 2013 was a fellow journalist Carien du Plessis, the Senior Political writer at City Press, a National Sunday paper with 1.6-million readers.

          She made it with these disgusting words in her Tweets: “Crap, fukkit, shit” and “Pee in my pants.” A worthy qualifier don’t you think.

          She seemed to have ceased her Twitter crudity after my post. I’m not sure if it was her decision or whether her editor Ferial Haffagee told her to stop it.

          Here’s the link to my post:can-swearing-on-twitter-journalism-mix

          Next came the sweary maverick of them all who seems to believe that this should not be exclusively a man thing.

       

Davis

   After I criticised Rebecca Davis on Twitter for her “Fucking hell” comment the Daily Maverick, the online paper she writes for, gave her free rein to get stuck into me, although she didn’t have the guts to name me.

          In about a thousand words headed, In defence of sweary women she bragged that “Profanity is part of my rhetorical armoury.”

          She used “Fucking hell”, which was the subject of my complaint, twice; “horseshit” four times and finished with “I’m fucking angry.”

Introduction to Davis' Daily Maverick article

          Here’s the link to my post on that one: mavericks-rebecca-davis-tells-it-like

         

Barlow

The third one to be chosen for this dubious honour of being included in this writing on the Wall was Celeste Barlow. She slipped in last month just before Unathi hit the headlines.

          However as you will see from my post about her I believe she is in a very different category to all the other sweary women in this post. She appears to have a very sad, perhaps legitimate reason for muddying her blog and in particular her Stikeez rant about the Pick n Pay supermarket group.

          Here’s the link: award-winning-mommy-bloggers-cry

         

Not to be outdone the USA got a mention through the unbelievable stupidity of an education professor no less, who cried out to be sacked.

         

Buchanan

If you thought that Teresa Buchanan a 53 year old Education Professor at Louisiana State University would have got the kids stuff vulgarity out of her system many years ago you would have been totally wrong.

          She kept saying “fuck no” in class and used the word “pussy” in an off-campus conversation with a teacher. She even admitted using profanities now and again and making jokes to keep her students paying attention.  

          She told the investigative daily The Nation that she didn’t recall saying “pussy” but if she did it would have been in a conversation about how teachers must learn to handle irate parents.

          “If a parent is very angry and says, ‘You need to do a better job, you little pussy,’(Do parents corrupt the teachers over there?) you need to know how to react. I wasn’t calling anybody that word.”

          Was this a comforting reply from this mature woman who specialised in early childhood education and trained elementary school teachers?

THE REPLY GOT HER ONTO THE WALL

          She had been at the university for 20 years when her shocking choice of words got her fired.

          A Facility Committee that initially heard her case took the M-net route. It decided that she be censured and that was all. But this decision was overruled by the top Administration, which sent her packing.

            She is now taking the legal route, but whatever the result it won’t restore her tainted name.

          Moral to the story: Watch what you say, particularly on social media and of course in the work place. It’s no achievement to be on my Sweary Women’s Wall.
          My mistake it seems that Johannesburg based freelance social media and digital content writer Tamaryn Shepherd seems to think it is. A shameless Tamaryn has just become Number 7 on the Wall.

         It's never ending. I keep  having to add to the list and what's more she is another journalist on the Johannesburg based Sunday Times, at least that's what she appears to claim. Her she is;

            Regards,

            Jon

P.S. It’s not that I have only got one eye, it’s just that I  have yet to come across any men in South Africa using the kind of offensive language on the internet as the women mentioned here. In America however where free speech has, like giving everyone a gun, been taken to ridiculous lengths the grossest of comments appear on the internet if this is anything to go by. school-massacres-too-late-to-stop-them

In this case it was glamorous syndicated columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin who was on the receiving end.

            

MAVERICK'S REBECCA DAVIS TELLS IT LIKE IT ISN'T

Dear Rebecca Davis,

         You didn’t half get your knickers in a twist over my Tweets attacking you for swearing on Twitter. The on-line paper the Daily Maverick that you write for then, somewhat surprisingly, gave you space to vent your anger with In defence of sweary women.

         In your haste to get into print you didn’t let the facts stand in the way of a good story. With the result that you got the wrong end of the stick completely.

         You huffed and puffed for something like 1000 words displaying the huge chip you seemed to have about being a woman. At the same time, like a child that had just been reprimanded for swearing, you used the phrase Fucking hell which was the subject of my complaint twice and finished with I’m fucking angry.

         Just to emphasise that nobody, least of all a man, was going to stop you swearing, you threw in horsehit four times as well as your show off boast that Profanity is part of my rhetorical armoury.

         For those readers who don’t keep up with Twitter’s swearing female journalists the background was this. Rebecca commented on the case of a teenage boy who had been convicted of killing his parents and his sister who he also raped.

         She Tweeted: So the accused raped his own sister? Fucking hell.

         I asked on Twitter if it was alright to use Fucking Hell in the stories that appear in the Daily Maverick.

         I gave a link to a previous post I had written entitled Can Swearing & Journalism mix . In it I took Carien du Plessis the senior political writer at City Press to task for using crap, fukkit, bullshit and pee in my paints in her Tweets.

         I argued that as a journalist she would not be allowed to use this kind of language in the stories she wrote for City Press. So as she was in the public eye she had a duty not to swear on social media as this would reflect badly on her paper.

         And Rebecca you had obviously read this post because you referred to it in your Maverick report as being badly written and that I only accused Du Plessis of using the word crap.

         I wasn’t even aware that ‘crap’ counted as a swearword, which shows how far beyond the pale I really am, you added.

        It also shows what a wrong impression you can give if you leave out a significant part of the story. To use your phrase this is extremely selective. 

         Also had you done a bit of research you would have found that Du Plessis ceased her vile Twitter language immediately after my post appeared. Did she have second thoughts or did her Editor Ferial Haffajee tell her to stop it. I don’t know so I’ll leave it to you to decide what this proves.

         Your paper seems to have one rule for its writers and another for people who comment on it. Those who comment are expected to abide by polite society everywhere so I would have expected that writers like you would be required to do the same.

         Evidently your Editor and founder Branko Brkic and I have very different ideas of polite society. My version certainly doesn’t include the use of words like fucking and horseshit.

         Your paper’s website tells us that anonymous comments are not acceptable as they do not breed thoughtful civilised debate. Real names make for a real community.

         So could you ask Branko why it was that among the comments on the bottom of your story there were people (I assume they were people) with names like Kate, LG, Bonb, Panther, Hilton and McKeon etc. You can’t get much more anonymous than that.

THE EDITOR

          My second question to him is this. If names are so important why didn’t you mention my name which is on my Twitter profile? Instead you described me as a stranger; one of the critics of my swearing and this same man.

         By inference you attributed this to me. It is my experience, however, that the same men who jump to rebuke me for swearing do not seem remotely disturbed by the swearing of my male counterparts, which suggests that their delicate sense of offence is extremely selective.

AN EXTRACT FROM MY ORIGINAL POST ON THIS SUBJECT
THAT SHOWED I WAS IN GOOD COMPANY DEPLORING THIS
KIND OF LANGUAGE ON TWITTER

         Well as you have not yet got the message Rebecca my criticism of your swearing had nothing to do with you being a woman. It was, as I have already mentioned, entirely due to the fact that you are a journalist. I would have said the same about any male journo who did what you did.

         From what I’ve seen so far the male scribes have more sense and don’t have to court publicity by soiling their own doorstep with swear words on Twitter.

         Having once been employed editing Oxford English Dictionaries I wouldn’t dispute your brag that you can legitimately lay claim to a rich and extensive vocabulary; a bounteous lexical storehouse stacked high and deep with sufficient entries to convey countless shades of meaning and nuances of emotion.

         A built in dictionary doesn’t necessarily make you a good journalist.

         You went on to say that I know loads of words. I know so many words that I know ‘horsehit’ is by no means my only option to express repugnance.       

         Yet like the little girl, sorry I better mention a boy as well, trying to get attention you chose swear words instead of any of the other more acceptable words in your head. So you had no logical excuse.

         As you rightly said The precise form the censor takes varies, but the essence is always the same. In choosing to swear on a public platform, you reveal yourself not to be a ‘lady’. You betray a fundamental lack of ‘class’. You expose a vocabulary so deficient that you lack non-sweary alternatives. You encourage observers to lose all respect for you.

         You said it Rebecca not me and whether you like it or not this is exactly how sweary birds are perceived by many people.

The key question is: Do newspapers that often expose the imperfections of others need columnists and reporters like this?

          Craig Bishop, who was probably unaware of the journalist aspect, gave an apt if not somewhat harsh summary of the situation in his comment on your report.

 This is not a feminist problem – it is a social problem, he wrote. Trying to paint swearing into a feminist corner, while not invalid, limits the total resources society can bring to bear upon the problem. Besides, swearing has been and always will be the refuge of the illiterate, the uneducated, the vilely narcissistic, and rightfully, people who have dropped a sledge hammer on their toe.

         As an aside I think a lot more women must be taking up DIY.  There’s an awful lot of foul-mouthed chicks out there. It doesn’t somehow make them equal to men. It makes them equal to the illiterate, uneducated and vilely narcissistic men they have been told they can be equal to.

         Why not be better?

         The first comment I got after my tiff with you referred to my Du Plessis post. It was an Anonymous one saying:  Fucking sexist crap, this.

         Obviously I don’t know who sent it but the wording has the same sort of ring to it as the Readers Comments Policy on the Maverick’s website that begins Don’t write stupid crap.

         That’s one of the problems with those many cowards who hide behind Anonymous tags. They leave so much to the imagination.

         Anyway enough of my cr..azy and fff…… fanciful ideas on how hacks should behave because we all know that practising what they preach is not one of their strong points.

         Regards,

         Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman, who exposes the embarrassing stuff about the Press that it would prefer to keep under wraps.

P.S. In the interest of fairness I would have liked to get a comment from your Editor before I posted this but I was unable to do this. Your paper’s website tells us that as the individuals on your paper are constantly running around to bring you amazing news and analysis we can be a little hard to reach. This proved to be true as far as I was concerned.

P.P.S. This seems far from ideal if you are in the news gathering business.

P.P.P.S. It seems this post did some good because the Maverick's Readers Policy was changed. Here is my Tweet about it on 25/9/2014.