PETER BRUCE AND HOW THE MEDIA BURIES ITS DEPARTED

Dear Newspaper Readers,

          It was a fascinating Sunday Times column this week by Peter Bruce. It was particularly fascinating because it showed how a journalist of his stature hadn’t noticed that the beginning of what he had to say made the second part so wrong.

He was explaining why being an editor is the best job in the world.

          Bruce should know. He is the Editor in Chief of the Johannesburg based Business Day and Financial Mail, which are both in the Times Media Group that also owns the Sunday Times.

Evidently this gives him a certain aura which ensures that no sub-editor or anybody else interferes with his column even when he blatantly contradicts himself.

          Initially he told us: “On any publication there’s constant tension between owner and editor and one thing never changes: the owner is the boss.”

          Then further down in the same column he maintained that being an editor is a fantastic job because “no one tells you what to do and you are given the most astonishing degree of control,” so much so that “you’re God and you don’t have to be nice about it.”

          Peter old chap I hope you won’t think it impertinent of me, but you really need to brush up on your knowledge of the Bible. Last time I looked at it, which let’s face wasn’t exactly yesterday, I’m sure it said somewhere that there is only one God – not two as you seem to think.

          If what you said about the owner being the boss is correct the editor can only be a disciple, certainly not God.

          Bruce went on to tell us that Business Day’s editor Songezo Zibi had just resigned and he praised him as if he really had been God.

SONGEZO ZIBI & BRUCE

          It reminded me of the way the reputations of the dead are so often given an impressive boost at their funerals by making them out to be far better than they ever were when they were alive.

          In typical newspaper fashion Bruce did what he would no doubt not have expected of journalists under him – he omitted the most important part of the story.

          Why Zibi departed after less than two years in his Heaven sent job was left to the reader to speculate.

          Rumour or was it fact had it that he was sick and tired of management interference.

          By management could he have meant Bruce himself? You see he actually replaced Bruce, who had been fulfilling the dual role of long time editor and Editor in Chief, a position he continued to hold after Zibi’s appointment.

          Could it have been that Zibi could no longer take having the man he had replaced constantly peering over his shoulder and that was why Bruce was not at all specific about the actual reason why Zibi left?

PHYLICIA OPPELT

          Recently the editor of the Sunday Times itself, Phylicia Oppelt departed in the same mysterious fashion as Zibi.

          I get that paper regularly and I saw nothing to explain why she had gone after becoming the first female editor in the history of this 107 year old national paper.

            Oppelt was moved “upstairs” as the saying goes to become “GM for editorial projects” whatever that means. If she had been no good as editor one wonders if she will be any better in this position.

          Inexplicably her replacement was Bongani Siqoko, the editor of the minute East London Daily Dispatch. This has a measly circulation of just under 25 000 whereas the Sunday Times figure is close to 500 000.

          He had only edited the Dispatch for a little less than three years.

          In the last few years the Sunday Times group had two in house Ombudsmen neither of whom lasted very long.

          They were both veteran journalists and former editors. The first one was Thabo Leshilo who was followed by Joe Latakgomo.

          I never saw anything in the Sunday Times or other papers in the same stable that explained why they had left or that they had left. Even now if you Google their names you won’t get the answer to this.

          They were two more examples of the way newspapers bury their departed without taking their readers into their confidence. No doubt there are numerous others.

          The Times Media Group no longer has an ombudsman, possibly because this “look how open and honest we are” experiment proved too embarrassing, or it still has one which it is keeping mum about.

          Regards,

          Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman who believes the Media should practice what it preaches, something it finds exceedingly hard to do.

P.S. I’m the Boss and Editor of this blog of mine so I definitely have complete control of what appears in it, but I have no claims to being God. I also don’t have to be nice, but I try to be truthful as well as fair with a comical touch thrown in.        

          

THE SUNDAY TIMES BADLY NEEDS A TRUTH DRUG INJECTION

Dear Newspaper Readers,

Pearlie Joubert - journo who
started it all

          Today’s Johannesburg based Sunday Times carries an Editorial entitled Our commitment to the truth is absolute. Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!

          This appears to have been prompted by its now ex-journalist Pearlie Joubert who took her own paper to task for what she considered to be the unethical way it conducted an investigation into a rogue unit at the South Africa Revenue Service.

            I won’t go into the details as this has been widely reported elsewhere. The paper of course has stated that her allegations are completely unfounded.

            My concern however is the accuracy of this Editorial. From my own firsthand experience I believe that the paper needs a strong dose of the truth drug.

THAT EDITORIAL

          Here are some of the extremely moral claims it makes for itself in that Editorial. I will then tell you about my experiences with the paper as the self appointed Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman. You can judge for yourself just how honest the Sunday Times actually is.

          “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,” is one of them. Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!

          “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.” Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!

          “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.” Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!

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

“We have never abused your trust, and never will.” Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!

“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.” Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!

“We constantly remind ourselves that our conduct must never be motivated or influenced by anything other than the public interest.” Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!

“Therefore any insinuation that we have been swayed by anything other than the public interest is baseless.” HA-HA! HA-HA! HA-HA!

VERY LATEST
THIS IS THE BIGGEST JOKE OF ALL. THE DAILY MAVERICK'S
REPORT JUST THREE DAYS AFTER THE "WE ARE SO HONEST"
EDITORIAL APPEARED

If there is no fiction in all this self praise how does the paper explain the following? For several years until a couple of years ago it had its own in house ombudsman. The first one didn’t last long and nor did the second one. I raised complaints with both of them and got nowhere.

Now they don’t have one at all. My belief is they were causing too much embarrassment. One even made the absurd suggestion in print that corrections should be given the same prominence in the paper as the original story. The paper couldn’t possibly have its mistakes exposed in this fashion could it?

In about 2009 I began what turned out to be a long running campaign on my blog to get the Sunday Times to stop carrying get-rich-quick ads that were so obviously scams because the returns being offered were far, far too good to be true.

I sent my first complaint to Thabo Leshilo the ombudsman at the time.

In an article naming me that he wrote in the paper he indicated that something would be done to ensure these no longer appeared. His view was that “Ads like the rest of the paper had to be believable.”

Inevitably nothing happened. Money was clearly more important to the paper than morality. This made nonsense of the Editorial's claim that “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.”

            In December 2010 I wrote a post headed Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman sensors Sunday Times (sensorship) addressed to the paper’s business journalist Brendan Peacock who had written an article in the business section (Business Times) headed “Hallmarks of a Scam.”

          I asked whether he read his own paper because while it carried his “sanctimonious article on how not to get scammed” it continued to carry ads which were clearly scams as they complied with just about everything mentioned in his article.

          The ads continued to appear and no doubt people who could least afford it continued to lose a life time of savings. So much for the paper’s concern for the interests of the public. (“We constantly remind ourselves that our conduct must never be motivated or influenced by anything other than the public interest.”)

          In September 2011 I wrote another post headed Sunday Times – haven for dubious adverts (dubious ads). This was after I had complained to Leshilo’s successor Joe Latakgomo and he had written an article headed “Beware of dubious adverting claims.”

          In it he said these “erode the public trust in newspapers. We are distressed by the number of scams that infiltrate our pages and cheat our readers. We will continue as journalists to expose those that cheat and lie to our readers.”

Joe Latakgomo writing about my
complaint

          But as far as I know the Sunday Times (I get it every week) did not expose these crooks that were making a packet by advertising in its own paper and nor did it stop taking the ads. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you however rotten that hand happens to be seems to have been its thinking.

Joe again

It’s hard then to understand how that Editorial had the gall to tell us that the paper prides itself as being known for its “ethical, award-winning and uncompromising investigative reporting that exposes wrongdoing.” 

The warning Joe was talking about above that the
     paper seemed to think absolved it from any
     responsibility for what happened to investors

In May 2012 I wrote another post headed Noseweek exposes Dearjon letter (dearjon-letter exposed). It was addressed to Ray Hartley the Sunday Times editor at the time and was a longer version of what I had written for Noseweek, South Africa’s only investigative magazine.

I told Ray that it was “deplorable the way your paper has been promoting crooks for years.”
                 

I referred him to an expose` that had just been aired on the Carte Blanche TV channel. It revealed that Kevin Cholwich and François Buys had defrauded people out of millions and two of the companies they used were Whoopee and Geo Connect. And surprise, surprise these were ones that I had complained about when their ads appeared in the Sunday Times.

One investor, a 47 year old mother of two lost her entire pension of R250 000 accumulated over 10 years of hard graft after she put it into Whoopee.

This might never have happened if the Sunday Times practised anything like what it preaches.

It was only after this that these kinds of dubious ads seemed to disappear from the Sunday Times. Of course it would never admit that I had anything to do with this.

JONES IN NOSEWEEK

       Another shocking example of the questionable morality at this paper involved Jim Jones the former Editor of Business Day in Johannesburg who had been a freelance writer for Business Times.

Nobody it appears had bothered to check his most recent background so when he started writing for the Sunday Times they didn’t know, or if they did they ignored it, that he had been fired by his previous employer, Moneyweb for helping himself to R200 000 of the firm’s money.

Things came to a head when he used his position on the Sunday Times to write a scathing article about Moneyweb, an online financial investment reporting firm that is quoted on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The Sunday Times was forced to apologise and a damning Noseweek article exposed him as a crook.

At the time Alec Hogg, Moneyweb’s founder said Jones was fired by his firm and forced to repay the R200 000 he had stolen.

At this stage the Sunday Times could not have had any excuse for not being fully aware that Jones could only damage the paper’s reputation if he continued to write for it, especially in the business section.

Yet it continued to employ him. After disappearing for a while his byline reappeared.

In July 2012 Joe Latakgomo wrote in one of his general columns that appeared periodically in the Sunday Times that the “Media must stick to nothing but the truth” as it derived its “moral authority from being trusted.”

Ironically the following week Jim Jones’ byline reappeared in Business Times. So I sent Joe an email referring to Jones and asked: “Can one trust a newspaper that continues to employ someone it knows has a record of this kind.”

He didn’t even have the courtesy to reply. Was this being “conscious of and responsive to concerns or complaints regarding anything that appears in this paper as part of our public accountability system?”

I then wrote another post entitled Sunday Times’ phoney morality (phoney morality).

At the time of the Noseweek article Jones’ reports were all over Business Times together with his impressive byline. Then it got smaller and smaller only to disappear for a while and then reappear at bigger and bigger intervals before fading out completely. It looked as though somebody was very reluctant to see him go.

SO IF PEARLIE JOUBERT HAS BEEN TELLING FANCIFUL STORIES AS THE PAPER ALLEGES I CAN SEE WHERE SHE GOT THE IDEA FROM – HER OLD PAPER ITSELF, THE SUNDAY TIMES THAT HAS BEEN SETTING SUCH A POOR EXAMPLE.

LATEST, LATEST: This appeared on the front page of the
              Sunday Times just 14 days are after that "We are so perfect" Editorial

Regards,

Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman who tries to tell it like it is and not as he thinks people would like to hear it. 

           

Noseweek exposes Dearjon Letter

Dear Ray Hartley Editor of the Sunday Times,

         As you probably know by now Noseweek, South Africa’s only investigative magazine, has published a slightly shortened version of this letter in its May edition. But I thought you would like to read the original. So here it is.

*   *   *   *

        It’s deplorable the way your paper has been promoting crooks for years. This is especially so as the Sunday Times likes to brag that its team of investigative reporters are there to do just the opposite.

         Do you know what I’m talking about? Well you should if you watched Carte Blanche’s expose` on TV the other night.

Cholwich

        It was about the activities of two wide boys Kevin Cholwich and Francois Buys. They were said to have defrauded a host of people out of a total of more than R100-million over the last few years with a variety of scams.

News Flash 13/05/2012: BUYS commited suicide last week by hanging himself.

          But where the Sunday Times comes in was that two of their companies that were mentioned were Whoopee and Geo Connect.

Buys

         So what, you might ask? What’s that got to do with a paper that is believed by over 3-million readers a week?

The answer is that you have been carrying Whoopee and Geo Connect advertisements and various other suspect ones that promote get-rich-quick schemes.

And all my efforts to get you to stop have come to nothing.

         "We can’t be expected to check every ad that appears in the paper," you could argue. "That’s why we specifically warn investors to be careful where they put their money."

         Sorry that won’t wash in this case. I have been campaigning for more than three years to get your paper to stop these ads because they could harm a lot of people, particularly pensioners and those who can least afford to lose their savings.  

         I first complained to Thabo Leshilo in 2009 shortly after he had been appointed the Public Editor for the Avusa Group (Sunday Times, The Times, Sowetan etc). This Harvard educated, former editor of several Avusa papers, was billed as the Group Ombudsman.

         He apparently agreed with me judging by the story he wrote in the Sunday Times headed Taking a stand on unsavoury adverts. The report mentioned my name and implied that something was going to be done to ensure this kind of advertising no longer appeared.

As he put it ads, "like the rest of the paper had to be believable."

        Tragically it didn’t take long for your paper to revert back to its old ways. So I complained to the Press Council that it had not kept its word, but Thabo claimed to have no knowledge of the article. Unfortunately I had not kept a copy and it was nowhere to be found on the internet, so my complaint was dismissed.

         At one stage I accused him of being a window dressing appointment who had not been given the power to deal with complaints effectively.  He replied that he had been "agonising over this." Soon afterwards he disappeared without a trace and even Google still says he has the same job.

         The ads carried on appearing and I continued to complain.

         Thabo was succeeded, as you know, by veteran newsman Joe Latakgomo, who has an equally impressive pedigree. In the early days of his tenure he got upset with me because he felt I had accused him of being another lame ombudsman.

         But his subsequent reports in the Sunday Times and The Times have given little indication that he is anything other than a run of the mill columnist. I have only seen one that dealt with a specific complaint and that was mine. And even then he made no definite finding.

         In September last year he wrote an article headed Beware of dubious advertising claims.  And once again it looked as though your paper was finally going to stop aiding crooks.

         Joe told us that these come-ons "eroded the public’s trust in newspapers" and that "false advertising, or advertising that makes claims which are patently exaggerated, impacts on consumer confidence."

       Then he gave us this assurance: "We will continue as journalists to expose those who cheat and lie to our readers."

       Not only were these two scamsters not exposed in your paper, even though their dubious history of some 10 years or more was there for all to see on the internet, but the dicey ads continued.

         Now Carte Blanche has revealed that both Whoopee and Geo Connect were some of the many creations of the Cholwich-Buys team and people who invested in them lost the lot. So much for their money back guarantees given in your paper.

         One investor was Veronica Diedricks, a 47 year old former Telkom project manager who lives in Krugersdorp. This mother of two teenage boys put her entire pension payment of R250 000 that she had accumulated after 10 years of hard graft into Whoopee.

         She left Telkom because of white and black racial issues which meant the whites had little prospect of promotion and is now a contract worker for Nokia Siemens where she is "very happy." Her husband was retrenched and as neither of them gets a pension they were relying on the Whoopee investment to improve their lives. 

         Like many others she is not shouting whoopee, I can tell you. "Now money in my house is very scarce," she told me.

This was supposed to be a website linked to a call centre to enable people to advertise their businesses at a monthly fee. The men then took huge amounts for the privilege of becoming a licence holder in the scheme.  

Diedricks was promised R60 000 a month after 15 months, but all she got were a few payments of R28 and then last March a letter arrived saying the business had run out of money and was closing.

It had raked in R8-million.

Buys appeared on the TV show in tears as the duped partner who admitted very little. Cholwich was invited to give his side, but never did.

         Both men are unrehabilitated insolvents, who get people to front for them as directors of the companies. They have been going from one failed business to the next. Other names they have used include The Bare Essence, Phone Petrol, Prepaid Online, Duo Dial, Free Talk, Money Call, Dynamic Life and Xtreme Telecoms (its ads also appeared in the Sunday Times).

         A disgruntled former director has created a website for the sole purpose of warning people against the business practices of the two men.

         It claims that the motto they live by is "Fake it till you make it", and they certainly seem to have done that.

         The site, that includes pictures of theses smooth talkers, invites people to join its Justice 101 campaign to try and ensure that these con-men get what they deserve in a criminal court.

        I hope that you and your paper are proud of having helped them to fleece so many people, because without the huge exposure that the Sunday Times gave them, I doubt whether they would have left such a long trail of desperate, poverty stricken pensioners and bread winners in their wake.

         Your disgusted reader,

         Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman, who can’t say, "I told you", often enough.

         P.S. It’s not too late to give these two gentlemen the usual treatment that you meet out to corrupt Government officials and other individuals. The question is: "Are you man enough to do it?"                                     *   *   *   *
      When I told Bokkie Gerber, Editor of Rapport, South Africa's Afrikaans national Sunday paper to look a this post as it applied equally to his paper he replied: "Thanks. These kind of ads are a big concern. I have asked our ads department to take extra care to screen ads and not accept those with dodgy promises."
        His approach was totally different to that of the Sunday Times where no Editor ever admitted to me that there was anything wrong during my three year campaign to get the paper to stop taking these ads.
                

Sunday Times - haven for dubious adverts

Dear Sunday Times internal ombudsman Joe Latakgomo,

         Two years ago the story I instigated was headed Taking a stand on unsavoury adverts. That was written by your predecessor Thabo Leshilo, who disappeared with out a trace earlier this year.

         It arose after I complained that this paper, South Africa’s largest weekly with over 3-million readers, was carrying suspect get-rich-quick ads that could easily result in unsuspecting investors losing a fortune.

In the story Leshilo wrote, he said that adverts like the rest of the paper should be believable.

But the headline certainly wasn’t because far from taking a stand, the paper continued to accept this type of adverting in spite of my continuous campaign to get it stopped.

Unfortunately I didn’t keep a copy of the article and it was nowhere to be found when the Press Council’s deputy ombudsman Dr Johan Retief asked for it.

Stranger still Leshilo told him that he didn't know what I was talking about.

The latest in the saga is another story, once again instigated by my complaints. This time it was your handiwork and was headed Beware of dubious adverting claims.

          As you rightly said, Such advertising erodes the public’s trust in newspapers. But, even more critical, false advertising, or advertising that makes claims which are patently exaggerated, impacts on consumer confidence.

       That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell your Avusa Group (Sunday Times, The Times, Sowetan, etc) for these many months. But from what you wrote your Group is still refusing to listen.

         It is happy to sit back and passed the buck to the Advertising Standards Authority, which has the job of policing adverts, although as far as I know it doesn’t go looking for trouble. It only deals with complaints. So as your papers can’t do anything decisive about these ads I have just submitted my own complaints to that body.

         The really pathetic part about the whole issue is that it is the Sunday Times and other papers in your Group that are publishing this reprehensible stuff that erodes the public trust in newspapers and not the Advertising Authority.

So if they had any morality at all they would put their own house in order and stop making excuses.

         What’s the point in punting the Sunday Time’s consumer watchdog, Megan Power in whole page adverts all over the place, if your own papers are making it easy for dodgy, get-rich-quick schemes to be promoted to a vast audience.

         In the same edition of the Sunday Times in which your story appeared mentioning my complaint there was an ad telling us we could earn R25 000 per month for an investment of just R100 000 with a money back guarantee. And best of all this fantastic return involves, No work. No effort. No Hassles. 

I challenger you, or any member of Avusa’s staff, to take up  this offer, and tell me how their investment is progressing in a year’s time.

You seem to think that by publishing a WARNING to readers to be careful about making investments this absolves your papers from any blame if somebody loses their shirt in one of these schemes.

Clearly they are not a bit bothered about eroding public trust in newspapers and it is this kind of attitude that sunk the News of the World.

What makes this even more inexplicable is that you say that this type of advertising forms only a small part of the total advertising revue. So why do the papers stubbornly hang on to something that can only damage their reputations?

We will continue as journalists to expose those who cheat and lie to our readers, those who compromise our integrity and damage our credibility as news sources for our readers, you wrote.

We are distressed by the number of scams that infiltrate our pages and cheat our readers. If that’s the case have you stopped to think who is aiding and abetting them?

You, or the Royal We, are so distressed that I wonder how many of these dicey schemes that have been advertised in the Sunday Times and other papers in your group have ever been investigated by a reporter.

My guess is: absolutely none in the last two years since I have been monitoring the situation.

Yours watchfully,

Jon, The Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman.