CITY OF CAPE TOWN'S NEVER ENDING MONEY DUMP

Dear Cape Town Ratepayers,

Johan van der Merwe

          Do you know that your City is spending millions moving sand dunes around at an obsolete, windswept rubbish dump site? And to make matters worse there is no prospect of this money dumping that is running at half a million a year or more ever ending.

          The dump at Witsands next to a popular surfing and kite surfing beach between Kommetjie and Scarborough not far from Cape Point ceased being used for the City’s refuse something like 30 years ago. It is nowhere near where anybody lives.

          But that hasn’t stopped it devouring money at this alarming rate.

          If you had been there in the last few weeks you couldn’t be blamed if you had thought that an open cast mining operation was on the go.

          The machinery being used consisted of two huge dump trucks with “Burma Plant Hire & Mining” on the side and a tracked bulldozer and excavator some of them weighing up to 50 tons. All these had to be carted to and from the scene on expensive low bed loaders.

          I have been going to Witsands on a regular basis for some years now and this year the array of expensive earth moving equipment trundling across this expanse of white sand seemed bigger than ever.

          They spent more than a month flattening dunes; building sand castles; smoothing them over and causing sand storms when the endemic strong winds were blowing.

          It took me three weeks to get an explanation from the Council for what appears to be an incredible waste of money when there are so many much more deserving causes among the City’s huge poverty stricken population.

          Even then I was still left with questions unanswered by Johan van der Merwe, the Democratic Alliance Mayoral Committee Member responsible for Environmental Planning.

          After my first emailed I sent him a subsequent one asking him to clarify some of his answers.

          He told me that the cost of managing this historic landfill site over the last 10 years was estimated at R500 000 per year and that included the cost of using the City’s machinery. Other extracts of our email conversations, with my comments in brackets, were as follows.

Jon: How much will the current work cost and how long will it go on for?

Van der Merwe: It will last for two to four weeks and the City’s machinery will be used so the cost is minimal. (Since when does it cost virtually nothing if you use your own machinery? And it's been going for more like six weeks or more)

New Question

Jon: What City machinery are you talking about? For weeks now the only machinery on site was supplied by Burma Plant Hire. From what I was told the total hire cost for these four machines is around R5 000 an hour and assuming they work an 8 hour day that’s R40 000 a day. So if this goes on for say 20 working days the cost is close to R1-million. Was this job put out to tender?
                           1st Picture

Van der Merwe: These machines are sourced and provided by the City’s Fleet Management Department and are not contracted specifically for this job, but as part of the City’s fleet needs (This vague answer gives the impression that these machines are permanently hired by the City. Cape Town based Burma Plant Hire was no help other than to refer me to the Council). Further more these are not costed at the rate suggested (Shouldn’t he have put me right by giving me the correct figures).

*    *    *

Jon: Surely the waste has long since rotted down so why is it necessary to keep putting this sand blanket over it?
                           2nd Picture

Van der Merwe: All organic waste has decomposed, however plastic, glass and other non-biodegradable materials exist in large quantities and will remain in perpetuity.

New question

Jon: This is well covered by the sand in an area where few people go so what is the point of continuing to waste a huge amount of ratepayer’s money in moving the sand around every year when there are far more urgent matters to attend to that need a lot of money. If, as you say, there are large amounts of non-biodegradable material which will remain “in perpetuity,” does this mean the City will be pouring an ever increasing amount of money into this defunct rubbish dump forever?
                           3rd Picture

                                    4th Picture

Van der Merwe: Every winter (this is a winter rainfall area) natural ponds build up at the back of the beach which breach the landfill site and open it. The works being done now avoid that outcome. The system is far more complicated than is generally understood as it is not simply about the amount of sand on top of the landfill but the entire dynamic system which includes a seasonal wetland and out flow.

*    *    *

Jon: What efforts have been made to cover the area with indigenous vegetation?

Van der Merwe: This is very challenging and almost impossible to do as the sand is naturally mobile and therefore even if this was to be a successful experience, ‘modifying’ this natural system would require several authorizations.
                          5th Picture

You can see in the foreground how well the vegetation grows
on the dunes when it it left alone. This excavator was enlarging 
the barren area by digging up plants with sand next to the road
(See 7th Picture) well away from the place where the refuse is 
buried. This was then taken in the dump trucks to just above
the beach (See 2nd Picture) where it was finally smoothed out
by the bulldozer

New question

Jon: What authorisations and from whom and at what cost?

Van der Merwe: This is Standard Operating Protocol as part of the landfill closure (If that’s the case what’s the problem, although this is not much of an explanation? Also why does he ignore the question of cost?).

*    *    *

Jon: By annually disturbing the dunes with heavy machinery and moving the sand around isn’t the Council just perpetuating the situation and with this going on there is absolutely no chance of the indigenous vegetation taking hold?

Van der Merwe: Sand naturally migrates and therefore it is unable to provide a stable and conducive environment for indigenous vegetation. Wind creates dunes and these naturally blow around, eventually causing waste to be exposed. The wind netting to be deployed, which will replace the brushwood used to date, (another additional cost) will limit excessive dune formation; keep a more permanent sand ‘blanket’ and also reduce annual operating requirements.

New question

Jon: It’s not true to say the sand doesn’t provide a stable environment for indigenous vegetation(See the 5th Picture from the top).

Van der Merwe: It is in fact true. This is a mobile sand system and old headland pass (A headland pass is a narrow waterway through a headland, but presumably if it is an “old” one it no longer runs. However on the one side of this Council made sand pit that covers an area of about 30 hectars there is a small stream that runs into the sea in winter and dries up in summer. There is quite thick vegetation on each side of this but it doesn’t go far on the one side because that’s where the sand has been dug up and moved around). It is not meant to be vegetated across the dune fields.

Jon: There are lots of parts of that Witsands area where sand dunes have clearly been covered by indigenous vegetation.

Van der Merwe: This only occurs at the back of the beach, which is not affected by the mobile sand system. This does not occur in the main mobile dune path.

Jon: The main reason, as I see it, that a lot of the area has not been covered by vegetation is because the Council has been moving the sand around every year and in addition the heavy machinery used has ploughed it up all over the place. I don't think plants could survive for long anywhere in these conditions. In the wind the current work is making sand storms which are probably blowing the sand back from where it has been moved.

                           6th Picture

                           7th Picture

Council made sand storms

He again repeated that it was not meant to have vegetation “across the dune fields” and that what I wrote about the wind was also not correct as the “sand travels in a northwest direction as directed by the southeast wind” whatever that means.

*    *    *

Jon: How can the City possibly justify spending this kind of money on an on-going basis on a RUBBISH DUMP THAT WAS CLOSED IN 1985 ACCORDING TO WHAT I WAS TOLD, when shack areas are going up in flames almost daily leaving the poor with a great deal of needs.

Van der Merwe: This is an extremely cost-effective measure of managing the landfill site. Without management the City will have to spend far greater amounts collecting all the waste that will be distributed when a breach occurs as well as the unsightly impact of exposed landfill on the beach. Please see the enclosed pics of this prior to the City’s management interventions. 
                           8th Picture

This is what happened, according to Johan, before the current
R500 000 a year plus scheme was adopted. This was not surprising
as there was no vegetation or anything else to hold this expanse of
fine white sand in place

        9th Picture

Furthermore it should be noted that the Witsands Landfill Project was designed and implemented as a job creation programme that, successfully over many years, has created employment in the form of brush wood collection, hedge row replacement and litter picking for the communities.

Of the annual budget to this project more than 60% goes directly to unskilled labour employment – this has been a very successful project (My underlining).

*    *    *

          From what Johan told me it means that of the R500 000 a year that has been spent on this dump in recent years R300 000 a year has gone to disadvantaged people.

 I FIND THIS EXTREMELY HARD TO BELIEVE UNLESS THEY HAD SHARES IN AN EARTH MOVING COMPANY.

I have been going there often in the last few years and in recent times I haven’t seen anybody, apart from the drivers of the earth moving equipment, working there.

          There are signs of brushwood used to try and stabilise the dunes showing above the sand in a few places, but this is now going to be replaced with netting, according to Johan, so the job of collecting this now falls away – not that I would imagine it as being a very lucrative occupation. Here is the netting being erected.
                           10th Picture

                           11th Picture

                           12th Picture

This was how this spider web of netting began

                           13th Picture

Then the web spread out to this before being spun out all
along the side of the beach

              The City has employed Vula Environmental Restoration, a firm that specialises in dealing with degraded and modified coastal dunes, to erect the nets.

             The person in charge of the work told me this was a "tried and tested" method of ensuring that the sand was blown on to the beach instead of inland. He said nothing else had worked so far (See also http: wasting more money)  

         WHAT AFTER 30 YEARS ?       

           When I suggested that the best solution was to cover the entire area with Port Jackson he laughed and said, "They're trying to get rid of that."

           He agreed that the cost of putting up this netting was "huge." It turned out to be R150 000.

           Witsands is designated a free running beach for dogs but he assured me that provision had been made for this with gaps in the net fences to enable animals to get out of the maze if they had to.  But they might need a Garmin to do this. 

          Although I only saw the initial stages of this work I was told about five kilometres of this netting will be erected in an area about 100 metres wide where the sand has been banked up next to the beach. 

          I wonder how many of these flimsy net fences will still be standing in six months time after sand has been blown up against them and whether they will be just as much of a failure as the brush wood.

          I haven’t a clue what Johan means when he said the project has provided an income for people doing “hedge row replacement and litter picking”. There are no hedges around there as far as I know. It’s all wild indigenous plants and bush and if the scheme has been so successful what litter would there have been to pick?

          You ratepayers must decide if it is prudent to spend R500 000 or more a year of your money on protecting an historic rubbish dump more or less in the middle of nowhere.

          As one myself I’m appalled. There surely must be a better way of dealing with this like diverting run-off from the mountain side into the existing stream at the side of the dump and making sure that all the dunes are well covered with 

vegetation. 

This new growth
was showing just
a couple of months
after this area was
ravaged by fire and
it didn't need rain
to get it going

          The obvious solution as I see it would be to plant the whole area over the dump with Port Jackson(Acasia saligna) willow. Alright I know it has been declared an invasive alien but it has proved to be very effective for holding sand dunes in place. It also recovers quickly from bush fires which are common around Cape Town in summer.
          Acasia saligna is a rapid growing, dense spreading small tree or shrub that seeds itself prolifically and can grow over a meter a year when young. Many years ago it was introduced from its native Australia to hold the sand down on the Cape Flats, another part of Cape Town that is similar to Witsands in that it borders the sea.
          It then got itself a bad name because is spread all over the place from the flats to the mountain sides where it took over from the indigenous fynbos that is a unique variety of flora found nowhere else in the world.

          In this case planting Acasia saligna would be a lesser evil than spending millions that could be put to better use like uplifting the poor. In any case it wouldn't be replacing the local vegetation as there is nothing growing over the dump anyway. 
                         14th Picture 

         Before horrified fynbos lovers start protesting at my idea they should first have a look at the mountain side (See 14th Picture above) next to the Ocean View township on Kommetjie road opposite where I live. This is just over the mountain from where Witsands is.

It's spectacular when
in flower

         It is covered with a veritable forest of Port Jackson which the Council does nothing about.  If the Witsands dump looked like this nobody would ever have to be concerned that it would wash away again. There would also be no sand blowing around and no need for any further maintenance work on it - a saving of millions for the City Council.
         Even now there are already clumps of Port Jackson growing on the dunes at Witsands (It can be seen in the foreground of the 5th Picture).

          Regards

          Jon, a Consumer Watchdog trying to clear the sand from his eyes after walking his dogs on Witsands beach and wondering how much his rates and electricity bills will go up in the next couple of months.          

IS SUNDAY TIMES JOURNALISM AIMING FOR JUNK STATUS

 Dear Bongani Sigoko, Editor of the Sunday Times,

          I know you have only been in the job of heading South Africa’s best selling national Sunday paper for a few editions but is there any chance of you arresting the journalistic rot that has set in on your paper.

          The Sunday Times is giving a new impetus to that old cliché “You can’t believe everything you read in the papers.”

          How else can you explain the “Matter of fact” apologies that are becoming such a regular feature on Page 2 with other more serious ones getting slightly more exposure elsewhere.

          The question readers will increasingly be asking is: Apart from these apologies is the rest of it a “matter of fact”?

          What’s the thinking behind these half hearted, grudgingly given confessions that never appear with anything like the same prominence as the original story?

          I accept that the Press Ombudsman, Johan Retief has ordered your paper to print some of them. But when it comes to the voluntary ones are they there to appease the complainants with the aim of preventing them taking the matter any further or are they there to show your paper has done the right thing by admitting it was wrong?

          One thing is certain however and that is they all advertise your paper’s declining journalistic standards.

          For a newspaper that expects others to be open it keeps very quiet about the members of your editorial team who have been responsible for these clangers.

          You happily protect your own from the glare of publicity while you have no qualms about taking other people to task in print for their shortcomings.

          You even choose a Mampara to have a go at the person you judge to have done the stupidest thing of the week.

          Last Sunday it was the turn of Dan Retief, whose glittering career as a sports writer, TV presenter and author over a period of 40 years can’t have been bettered by many. He is the only journalist to have been the Sports Writer of the Year on three occasions and in the early nineties he was a Senior Correspondent for your paper.

          So presumably to emphasise the Sunday Times’ impartiality whoever writes these things couldn’t resist putting the boot in when Retief was forced to apologise for a controversial Twitter comment that got him into trouble.

          “It is not often that one who has graced the pages of this august newspaper with his pen in the past ends up being the Mampara,” your attack on him began.

          How august, prestigious, esteemed or illustrious can a paper be when its poor reporting is producing an increasing amount of questionable stories?

          You castigated him for “earning this dubious honour” while there must be other journalists who would qualify for Mamparadom, if only they were not protected by still being on your staff.

          Then too your Retief dig showed up another of your paper’s journalistic deficiencies. The writer evidently assumed that all the Sunday Time’s 3-million or so readers would know what Retief’s “remarks” were, so there was no need to tell them. It was left to those who didn’t know to use their imagination.

          What school of journalism teaches this?

          An Afrikaner himself Retief tweeted: “SA carried to victory by two White Afrikaners … politicians and media commentators take note …for what it is worth.” 
This was after our national cricket team's win against England.   

In a country where Blacks outnumber Whites by nearly 10 to 1 this caused the inevitable outcry which Retief had no way of justifying. But if your paper is going to chastise him the way it has done it should also have the guts to tell its readers who your current journalists are who can’t bring their fairy tales down to earth.

As you no doubt know he apologised soon afterwards but it was too late to prevent City Press, that other Sunday paper that is aimed mainly at Black readers, from deciding not to take his articles in future. He had evidently been freelancing for that publication.

Just in case you don’t know exactly what I am referring to here is your paper’s most recent “sorry” story.

6. December 2015: An Editorial headed Our commitment to the truth is absolute. Not only was this in itself not true but the entire Editorial was more fiction than anything else
 (the-sunday-times-badly-needs-truth-drug.      
 and  press-councils-special-protection-for.). 
And it wasn't made any more truthful by your paper's admissions that followed in the next few weeks.

20. December 2015: This Apology to the Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan was not one of your paper’s voluntary ones. You were ordered to carry it by the Press Ombudsman so I can’t understand why your paper waited for his ruling before conceding that “We accept we were in breach of the Press Code for failing to seek Gordhan’s comment ahead of publication.” That’s one of the basics of journalism that every cub reporter gets taught - to always get both sides of the story. So wouldn’t you have expected this to have been uppermost in the reporter’s mind, particularly when he was writing an expose` involving somebody as important at the Minister of Finance?

          31. January 2016: Here was another embarrassing climb down your paper was forced to make by the Press Ombudsman. The headline Apology to Lakela Kauda cried out that the Sunday Times was in the mire once again.

14. February 2016: This Matter of Fact was a double bill. First of all your paper apologised for attributing something to the wrong Government Minister in a story appropriately entitled: “Five years of denial, cover-ups and bluster.” The next part emphasised once again that your entire staff are very slow learners. The second part was yet another admission that the writer had failed to get both sides of the story. Of course this is not only a reflection of the reporter’s apparent ignorance but also of the sub-editor who dealt with it and an Editor who allows this kind of thing to persist. You do have sub-editors in this high tech age or am I still in my typewriter and shorthand days at your paper? 

           21. February 2016: I assume that even in these ostensibly serious Matter of Facts your paper likes to have a bit of fun now and again. I don’t know if you’ve seen how laughable this one is. Readers were told that Gabs Mtshala did not say what your paper claimed he had said about Ngqula. It added, “We also neglected to give Ngqula an opportunity to respond to the allegation.” What! Ideally one of your reporters should have asked Ngqula to respond to a non-existent allegation. This also shows that not getting both sides of the story is endemic on your paper. I managed to track down the “Dicksy says he’s no criminal” piece which has the bylines of Bongani Magasela and David Isaacson on the top. This raises the question: Who was to blame for this shoddy bit of journalism. Even with two scribes tackling this rather ordinary tale your paper couldn’t get it right. This report, which ran right across the top of a page, illustrated perfectly how your apologies are given nothing like the prominence of the original story.

          In 2008 your paper’s news room was in such disarray that an independent panel was appointed to establish what was wrong and how it could be fixed. Perhaps it’s time you had another one of these before things get any worse.

          Regards,

          Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman, who gives the other side of the story.        

GOOD RIDDANCE IF SA'S ADVERTISING WATCHDOG GOES

Dear Consumers,

Thembi  Msibi the ASA's
CEO

          I was interested to see that the South Africa Advertising Authority (ASA) has been telling a judge in the High Court things which in my experience are not true.

          In her Consumer Column in the Sunday Times Megan Power reported on the case involving the ASA’s efforts to discipline the Medical Nutritional Institute (Institute). This firm is in the business of making complimentary medicines – those that are made from plants, minerals etc.

          Having decided that the Institute’s advertised claims for its AntaGolin product, which was said to combat insulin resistance and help with weight reduction, were unsubstantiated the ASA wanted to issue an ad alert.

          This would have meant that all ASA members, the majority being media companies, would have refused to accept the company’s AntaGolin ads unless certain conditions were met.

          The firm successfully applied to the Johannesburg High Court to prevent the ASA from doing this and the order will remain in force until a R17-million action for damages brought against the ASA by the company has been concluded.

          It is also suing Doctor Harris Steinman for R200 000 for defamation. He was one of two people who complained about the ads that the firm says are not at all misleading.

          The ASA is appealing this judgement in which it was also ordered to remove all references on it website critical of the Institutes ads.

          At the beginning of her column Power stated that the ASA “protects consumers against misleading and unsubstantiated advertising.” Well I have first hand experience that shows that although it professes to be impartial it in not when its own media members are involved. And I have conclusive evidence of a deplorable case where the ASA has failed to protect the public in favour of one of its members.

          According to Power the ASA told the judge the following: It claimed its code was a contract between members of the advertising industry and members would not publish adverts that did not comply with it. It did not compel anyone to comply with its rules, but if advertisers wanted to publish adverts in media owned by its members they were then required to do so.

          “Publishing misleading advertising is intrinsically harmful to consumers, whether or not products cause actual physical harm,” the ASA maintained. “It is only the ASA that monitors the advertising industry as a whole and responds to complaints speedily and effectively.

          “The ASA’s complaint resolution turnaround is an impressive 30 days and its rulings are posted to its website.”

          I have made several complaints to the ASA and I would have made more if they had accepted them. Not one of them has been upheld. It surely can’t be just a coincidence that my experiences with the ASA make absolute nonsense of the claims mentioned above that were made before the judge. It could of course be that the “impartial” ASA doesn’t give the same consideration to complaints from people like me who have openly criticised its shortcomings on my blog as opposed to those who don’t.

          Here are examples:    

·      The most glaring ones that show how untrue these claims are appear in the Herbalist advertisements in the The Citizen daily newspaper. Many of the ads for such things as penus enlargements and instant wealth are so clearly a pack of lies that even the editor agreed with me that they are not believable. But when I complained about these to the ASA it refused to take my complaints and generally gave me the run around with the result that pages of these lies have continued to appear in that paper on a daily basis. (citizens dubious ads.html) And what makes this even more deplorable is that The Citizen is one of the ASA’s members through Caxton, the group that owns it.        

·      Another ASA member is the Johannesburg based Sunday Times. But when I complained about some of its get-rich-quick investment ads that often resulted in poor people being defrauded of their life savings the complaints were accepted and then conveniently lost. The result: Nearly a year and half later I got an apology and was told that because of the delay they could not finish what they had started(bungling asa.html). To show you what a humpty dumpty organisation the ASA is this is what a member of its staff wrote to me during this long running affair. “We note that your complaint refers to a Sunday Times advertisement. Please note that the ASA deals with and investigates specific advertisements.”

    

Here are some other reasons why what the Judge was told was not true:

·      The ASA maintained it is the only organisation that   “monitors the advertising industry as a whole.” The word monitor as far as I could establish means to “keep something under continuous scrutiny.”  Well from what I was told the ASA does no such thing. It only reacts to complaints. Also it conveniently doesn’t have the power to tell any of its media members to stop accepting any ads until somebody has complained about the ads themselves and the ASA has ruled that they are not acceptable. So a paper like The Citizen can go on coining money by promoting charlatans in its Herbalists ads which are there for anybody, as well as the people who run the ASA, to see. Nothing will be done unless somebody complains and the complaint is upheld.  But then the ruling would only apply to the one ad complained about and there are pages of them all making similar extremely dubious claims. THAT’S THE ASA’S VERSION OF “MONOTORING THE INDUSTRY.”

      

·      Although it told the Judge that “publishing misleading advertising is intrinsically harmfully to consumers” it is doing such a great job of protecting consumers that The Citizen’s continues to carry a stack of “misleading advertising,” which it has been doing for years. Sorry that description is far too complimentary. Many of the ads contain complete and utter lies.                  

·      The ASA’s claim that its “complaint resolution turnaround is an impressive 30 days” makes out that this is how long it takes to get a ruling. This might happen in some cases but I can’t see how it can possibly be anything like the norm. I say this is because once a complaint has been received the ASA then has to get the advertiser’s side of the story before it can judge the issue. That can take weeks if not months. And as I found out when crooks place what are very obviously dicey ads the naïve ASA spends ages trying to get them to reply and when this doesn’t happen the ASA decides it can’t make a ruling. But it is so inconsistent that in at least one case that I know of it came to a decision without getting the advertiser’s version.

          In the court case the Institute argued that as it was not a member of the ASA it did not believe that it has any jurisdiction over it.  It contended that the Medicines & Related Substances Control Act as well as the Consumer Protection Act provided sufficient protection for consumers regarding its products.

          The ASA countered that it had been given statutory powers by the Electronic Communications Act to decide if ads carried on TV - this was where the controversial AntaGolin ads had mainly appeared - by its members complied with its code. This applied whether or not the advertiser was a member of the ASA or not.

          One of the ASA’s problems is that it tries at times, like in this case, to discipline firms that are not members of its organisation and that’s where things become very murky.          
                          

          On one occasion it found in favour of university professor Rudi de Lange who complained that a so called Dr Semba was exploiting consumers by saying on his website that his “psychic powers” could cure epilepsy, high blood pressure and other ailments. Semba’s unbelievable claims were similar to the ones being made in The Citizen ads for which the ASA refused to allow me to lodge any complaints.

          Having spent some time trying to get Semba’s side of the story, the ASA gave up when he did not reply and accepted what the Professor had to say.

          The ASA then showed how ridiculous it is when it tried to get Semba to stop what he was doing when it has no control over websites. So Semba continued to proclaim to the world the benefits of his psychic powers as if nothing had happened. 

          In her report headlined “Watchdog in chains as advertiser fights back” Power’s view was that if this legal battle resulted in the ASA being barred from making rulings about misleading and unsubstantiated advertising by non-members it could leave consumers “vulnerable to exploitation.”

          But it’s doing that already because it is protecting them in some cases but not in others as my experiences shows particularly as far as The Citizen is concerned. There may of course be other similar cases that I don’t know about

What’s more when it comes to making misleading statements the ASA is in a league of its own. Apart from what I have already mentioned it boldly stated on its website that it “regulates all advertising which should be legal, decent, honest and truthful and no advertisement should bring advertising into disrepute or reduce confidence in it.”

In my case this boast proved to be “misleading and unsubstantiated.” So the sooner this apology for an advertising police force disappears the better and is replaced by a much more effective organisation. In its present form its own promotional advertising screams out how bad self-regulation is as a means of controlling the unacceptable behaviour that affects consumers in any industry.

“The budget intended for the protection of consumers is being blown on defending legal attacks,” Power wrote. “The Medical Nutritional Institute’s lawyers represent several other companies including Herbex, Solal, Groupon and Ultimate Sports Nutrition which have challenged the ASA.”

So it looks as though the ASA could have to defend actions for millions more.

HERE’S HOPING IT GETS SUED INTO OBLIVION BECAUSE THAT’S EXACTLY WHERE IT SHOULD TO BE.  

CONSUMERS YOU DESERVE BETTER, A LOT BETTER.

Regards,

Jon, a Consumer Watchdog who unlike the ASA is not employed by any industry and as such can claim to be genuinely independent.

*Note: The ASA was established by its media members as a self-policing mechanism for advertising. It is run on similar lines to that other great media pillar of justice the South African Press Council. Both of them claim to be impartial while showing a distinct bias towards their media masters.

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.        

          

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.