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.

            

Can Swearing on Twitter & Journalism mix?

Dear Newspaper Readers,

Carien, ever the child



         Do you think it’s reasonable for journalists to play a dual writing role in the belief that the one can’t affect the other?

         What I’m talking about is hacks that are employed by newspapers and voice their opinions on social media at the same time using language that their papers wouldn’t countenance.

         For example I had a bit of an altercation on Twitter with Carien du Plessis who bills herself as a City Press political reporter. She claims: Love the job. In fact married to it.

         In my newspaper days political writers were in the top echelons of the profession, who you would not have expected to behave in a childish way; using attention seeking foul language for all to see. It would have damaged both their own and their paper’s credibility.

         But nobody seems to care now, least of all the City Press. This is a national Sunday paper with 1.6 million readers that claims to be the second most quoted paper in South Africa.

      Over a period of about a week I tried to get hold of City Press’ Editorial Policy. I got shunted from one person to another; given a wrong email address and then just when I thought I would get the answer from Gayle Edmunds, the Managing Editor, she referred me to somebody else.

      But not before confessing I don’t have a copy. How shameful. Needless to say I heard nothing from the person she asked to give me the information.

         Does the paper actually have one, I wondered

         Like a good journalist, as I don’t know what it contains, I will have to guess or better still quote an anonymous ‘source’.

         My source tells me that City Press journalists are not allowed to use swear words and any type of foul language to colour their reports.

         So if this is the case is it reasonable for Carien, who is actually their Senior Political writer, to spice up her Tweets with unnecessary words like crap, fukkit, shit and pee in my pants.

         My tiff with her on Twitter began after she Tweeted: Oh crap. I’m not good at this Lotto thing.



         The Twitter conversation then continued like this.

Jon - A lady doesn’t say ‘crap’. But then I suppose female journos have to keep up with the boys.

Carien - May be ladies don’t, but fortunately I’m not a lady. So I’ll say crap if I want to.

Jon - Thankfully some ladies are extinct because they keep saying ‘crap’ in front of your mother & they are proud of it. 

Carien - It’s my mom who raised me to be a woman, free from the crap that limits ladies to behave lady-like.

Jon - I’m surprised because in my limited experience Afrikaans vrous are extremely lady-like. And they would be shocked to have a daughter who craps on twitter for the world to see where she’s come from. Hopefully they’ve got good editors at City Press because people often complain that there’s a lot of crap in the papers.(That's two Tweets in one in case you are mystified)

Carien – Welcome to the 21st century, grandpa.

         Evidently I’m not the only media grandpa around who believes that foul language is not appropriate.

     

    Yusuff Abramjee the Head of News & Current Affairs Prime Media Broadcasting and Chairman of the National Press Council no less Tweeted this about Jackson Mthembu, the ANC party’s spokesman, Your language is a disgrace. Using the word “pissing” in not appropriate.

         I put this question about Carien’s language on Twitter to Ferial

Haffagee

Haffagee, the City Press’ Editor in Chief. Is it ok for your political reporter to crap on Twitter? Does that not reflect on your paper at all?

         And I added, Ferial don’t’ tell me it’s alright because she did it in her personal capacity, because reporters can’t divorce their Twits from their work.

         Has Ferial’s staff perhaps taken their lead from her? When she tells us about her background on Twitter she says I tweet what I like in my own capacity.

         I assume that means that whatever she says on Twitter will have no bearing on her work as the City Press Editor.

         What do you readers think? My view is that journalists on the staff of a newspaper are very much in the public eye and have a duty to behave themselves in a dignified manner especially when it comes to the very public medium of social networks.

         And they can’t expect people to believe that it is alright for them have split personalities that allows them to write all kinds of garbage in their own capacity on Twitter and in another capacity for their newspaper.

         Yours truthfully,

         Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman 

P.S. I noticed that Carien changed the Twitter picture of herself after our set-to. Is this her new, cleaner image? My mistake here's her latest Tweet   (the @ Jon is not me)
                          

                        Who is her admirer in the background?

Plessis
Note. Before posting this I sent it to both Ferial Haffagee and Carien du  and invited them to comment if they wished. Haffagee, who is also a board member of the International Press Institute and the International Women’s Media Foundation replied: Our editorial policy is guided by the Press Code which you can find on the website of the Press Council or I could mail you a copy. I’m sorry you had a run-around finding it. You will notice that journalists around the world add the rider that tweeting is in their own capacity. The Press Council has not yet included social media in its remit, though it may do so. Best wishes, Ferial.

Carien: I'll let the Tweets speak for themselves.