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.        

          

Sunday Times' phoney morality

Dear Joe Latakgomo Ombudsman for the Sunday Times and The Times,

          This must be unique. How often does one Ombudsman complain about another one?

          As the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman I feel I have to congratulate you on the one hand and reprimand you on the other.

          In a spat between Radio 702; Yusuf  Abramjee, head of news at Prime Media the owners of 702; Katy Katopodis the station’s News Editor and The Times and its big sister the Sunday Times you made a ruling for once. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t this the first ruling you have made since you were appointed the Avusa newspaper group’s Ombudsman or Public Editor as they fancifully dubbed you, more than a year ago?

          You took up an entire page of The Times to tell us that in an editorial and a subsequent column in the Sunday Times by Phylicia Oppelt, the editor of The Times, there was no justification for the attacks that had been made on Abramjee, who also happens to be Chairman of the Press Club, Katopodis and John Robbie, one of the station’s presenters.

          They had been accused of behaving unethically in connection with a story about a police unit having been disbanded, although it had had some success in curbing the activities of car hijackers that were masquerading as policemen in the Johannesburg area.

          In giving your decision you said that journalists must always be fair and honest in their reporting and dealings with those with whom they interact. You added that they must rise above their personal perspectives.  

          This prompted me to ask: Have you lived up to these high ideals yourself in dealing with my complaints to you regarding the Sunday Times.

          I’m referring here to Jim Jones, the former Editor of the Johannesburg based Business Day, who as a freelance has been the willow-the-wisp of the business section (Business Times) of the Sunday Times ever since a damning Noseweek article in October 2009.

Now you see his byline now you don’t.

Noseweek's Report

This investigative magazine revealed that he had been fired by Alec Hogg’s Moneyweb and had then written a scathing article in the Business Times for which the paper had to apologise.
At the time Hogg had this to say: 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 outrageous claims.

My initial thought 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 stole from our company.

At the time of the Noseweek article Jones’ reports were all over the Business Times together with his impressive byline. Then it got smaller and smaller and disappeared for a time only to reappear now and again at bigger and bigger intervals, but still in its hardly noticeable form.

In one of your general columns in the Sunday Times of 1 July this year you told readers that the Media must stick to nothing but the truth and that it derived its moral authority from being trusted.

It was ironic therefore that in the following week’s Business Times the Jim Jones byline should reappear.

And in an email to you I asked: Is this the kind of standard the Avusa Group sets? Can one trust a newspaper that continues to employ someone it knows has a record of this kind, especially in the Business section of a national paper?

You didn’t even have the courtesy to reply to me. Do you only consider complaints when they involve big names and ignore all the others?

So much for that reliance on that moral authority to be trusted that you talked about and being fair and honest with those with whom you interact.

There’s one thing about being a journalist from which there is no escape. You can’t claim you were misquoted if it’s there in print under your name.

So if you are going to continue telling us how the ideal journalist behaves in Heaven the least you can do is practise what you preach.

That’s my ruling.

Yours suspiciously,

Jon, who once thought he was wrong, but he was mistaken.

P.S. As you know the Sunday Times doesn’t easily admit its mistakes as my post noseweek exposes dearjon letter shows. So that’s why people have to rely on an Ombudsman, who should be impartial.

NOTE: Before I posted this I sent it to Joe in the interests
of FAIRNESS so he could make any comments he wished.

I got no reply.

Morals of newspaper columnists

Dear Phylicia Oppelt, Editor of The Times,

          You don’t seem to notice what’s happening in your own paper. So as the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman I thought I had better ask you what your policy is as far as your columnists are concerned.

          Can they use the pulling power of your publication to promote their own business ventures or those of their relatives?

          David Shapiro is a stockbroker and fund manager for Sasfin Twenty-Ten Fund and in one of his columns he blatantly told your readers about the shares he was adding to the portfolio I manage. He punted Rio Tinto, Brazil’s Vale; luxury goods firm LVMH; Nestle and so on. In addition he wrote of the merits of Kindle; iPad; the New York Times and three other overseas publications.

          There were more plugs in that half page of his than there are at Bathroom Bizarre.

          A week later, as promised, he dealt with themes upon which I am structuring my client’s portfolios. Another half page advertisement for his business followed.

          I have purposely steered towards companies that I am familiar with and in some cases I have repeated my choices, reinforcing their attraction, he said. He then tipped the same shares he had mentioned in the earlier column plus quite a few more.

          It was a sickening promotion of Shapiro Incorporated. And if a lot of your readers then rushed out and bought the shares he mentioned their value would have increased making yours truly out to be an impressive financial guru.

          Correct me if I’m wrong Phylicia, but I always thought a newspaper writer who tipped shares was not supposed to be in a position to benefit in any way from the performance of the ones he mentions.

          Early this year Shapiro waffled on about how he had recently visited his daughter in New York; was due to go to Sydney for his son’s wedding; his chest infection; watching TV; a shabbos dinner etc, etc. This monumental ego trip round the world was about as far from his mandate, which is billed as Making cents of High Finance, as the Man in the Moon.

          Your paper published a very short letter once from another reader who complained that Shapiro wrote too much about his domestic life and too little about Making cents of High Finance.

          Please Phylicia, if he can’t stick to the subject and give us impartial advice you should tell him to go and Twitter somewhere else.

          Then you had Peter Delmar getting on the advertising bandwagon in his column under the impressive headline Our minor is major talent. His mandate is It’s a small world, so he can’t be faulted on that score. Of course Peter is not in the same self promotion league as your David, but the principle remains the same.

          He devoted his entire column, which occupies the same position and space as Shapiro’s, to praising the major new musical talent of his 15 year old goddaughter. She goes to a posh private school so her parents are wealthy and they stumped up R25 000 to produce the girl’s first 500 CDs. The family was in the process of selling the albums at R100 a shot.

          For a brief moment Peter’s conscience awoke because he wrote that the girl merits a mention (nepotism aside). Some mention; this advertisement would have cost anybody else more than 60 grand. And no doubt sales of the CD have been given a huge boost.

          As an added bonus both Shapiro and Delmar got paid to write these puffs in this expensive space that they helped themselves to for free.

       Now that I have brought this ethical question to the fore perhaps you could let me know Phylicia, what you are going to do about it.

          Yours truly,

          Jon
PS. Mondli Makhanya, your overall Group Editor, had this to say about columns, You hand over a piece of real estate to the columnist. The onus is then on the columnist to treat the space with responsibility and not abuse that freedom from interference. Do you think these two did that Phylicia?

What code of Conduct

Dear Phylicia Oppelt, Editor of The Times,
             I said to my wife today that your paper is a great read now and she replied, It’s probably because its run by a woman. As I’m not a chauvinistic pig I have to reluctantly agree that my wife may possibly be right. But it’s a big may though? And if she is right it will be the first time this century.
          But while your paper could be the bargain of the decade at R2 and a five day a week freebie for Sunday Times subscribers, it’s an aspect of freebies that does concern me as the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman.
           I look out for things that are too piffling for the South African Press Ombudsman, Joe Thloloe to worry about. Although with the ANC breathing down your necks threatening all kinds of terrible things against the Press I would have thought Joe would be looking out for transgressions everywhere so I wouldn’t have to do it.
          The other day virtually the entire page was taken up with a glowing puff about the Marlin Lodge in Mozambique’s Benguerra Island and Federal Airlines.
          It was written by Shanthini Naidoo, your deputy features editor of this Avusa Group paper. And it began There are a few good reasons to blow the budget. One of them, for a recently-wed like me, is to relive your honeymoon. The Lodge has 17 suites with rates starting from R3 000 per person sharing. Not the kind of place the Poor Man’s Ombudsman can afford to stay in unless he got a job with you guys.
          That was in October and the article concluded with this rider Naidoo was a guest of Mantis Collections’ Marlin Lodge and Federal Airlines.
          Then in late November it was Andrea Nagel’s turn to languish in luxury so she could report on the Lions Sands game reserve in your BLOW THE BUDGET section. That’s some place by the sound of it. This private game reserve bordering the Kruger Park is the haunt, Nagel told us, of the very rich and famous. People like George Michael, Microsoft’s co-founder, Paul Allen and singer Vanessa Williams are just some of the names she dropped.
          Surprise, surprise people also go there to see wild animals, like the Big Five.
          The most romantic feature Nagel revealed was the private bush tree house at the top of a majestic 500-year-old Leadwood tree open on all sides to the plains and the wild animals that inhabit them. And though every moment of my weekend at Lions Sands was memorable, I’ll make sure that next time I sign up for the tree-house experience. Oh! and there will be a next time.  Even on a journalist’s miserable salary?

·       Nagel was a guest of Lions Sands we were told at the bottom.

          And in the sports section a week or so later a report on the Springboks’ tour of Britain by the rugby writer had a similar thought provoker. Simnikiwe Xabanisa is on the Springboks Grand Slam tour courtesy of British Airways.
           As the headline on Nagel’s article said, There’s no beating about the bush, so I won’t either. Does this mean Phylicia that The Times paid for these trips or did the journalists get them free?
            Avusa’s code of conduct you will recall proudly proclaims: We do not accept anything for free. We pay our way. We do not accept gifts, freebies, inducements, special offer tickets and so on that are not available to us as ordinary citizens.
          Well I’m an ordinary citizen, very ordinary my ex-wife would no doubt have told you, and I haven’t received an invite lately from Mala Mala game reserve (Approximately R4 000 to R6 000 a night sharing although they only talk in US dollars). And nor has South Africa Airways got around to inviting my wife and I to be their guests on a flight to Australia when they know perfectly well we have a daughter there.
          If these were free trips your paper was talking about, what’s the point in being so coy about them with these bits in italics at the end? Regarding the rugby one, is the rider the pay back advert for British Airways and in the case of the Naidoo and Nagel articles was it to tell us that, in the circumstances, we could hardly expect a critical assessment of the places where they stayed or the airline mentioned?

          EINA! In the Sunday Times of November 28 a prominent column on Page 4 ended with another of these what’s-going-on riders. It said, Makhanya visited Argentina courtesy of that country’s South African embassy.
          Did that mean us tax payers paid? If so nobody asked for my permission. Or was it the Argentinians who had the pleasure?
          You know who this is? It’s none other than Mondli Makhanya, former Editor in Chief of the Sunday Times and now the big shot of them all, the Editor in Chief of Avusa Media’s entire newspaper empire.
          What’s that the Press is always telling us; If you’re in the public eye don’t make a spectacle of yourself.
          Yours watchfully,
          Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman.

Buy my book 'Where have all the children gone?' on Amazon.com  It's a thriller with an underlying love story that defied generations of prejudice.