Publication: Business Day Date: 2005-11-22 Reporter: Jeremy Gordin Reporter:

Not Contrite
Publication 

Business Day
Date

2005-11-22

Reporter

 Jeremy Gordin

Web Link

www.bday.co.za

 

I believe, and have been told by my betters, that media infighting is a bore. Nonetheless, although I am not directly named, a few facts and comments regarding The Thick End of the Wedge (November 21).

The Sunday Times’ claim, which Peter Bruce quotes, that “... after sneaking a peak at copies of the Sunday Times running off the presses in ... Johannesburg ... the Sunday Independent’s editor rushed upstairs to change his front page story”, is simply incorrect.

I wrote the article quoting the Jacob Zuma rape complainant, in which she claimed she had made no complaint, and the copy of the Sunday Times I saw had already come off the presses in Durban, which is where I was on the night of Saturday November 12. The paper’s editor was also not at Sauer Street on that evening and I am not the editor.

I did not read any “contrition” in this weekend’s Independent, in which its editor “conceded” (Bruce’s word) that the Sunday Times got the story first. This was simply a statement of fact. Bruce was surprised I was directed to the complainant by “the Zuma camp”. Why? Had the complainant not stayed at Zuma’s house? Is not Zuma, by the complainant’s own admission, a long-standing friend of her family’s? Or is it that people in “the Zuma camp” are unworthy of trust and incapable of passing on a telephone number?

Jeremy Gordin
Acting Editor
Independent News Network

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Gordin and Business Day.


tut, tut.

Come on Journalists and Kin, there are more than enough scoops out there for the resourceful and the diligent. Your responsibility is to responsibly report the facts and occasionally offer some insightful opinion, sometimes with a bit of tasteful humour (ek praat nie nou van Loslyf nie, ens).

A far better option than media infighting is the media analogy of the the rugby rolling maul, pick it up, break the gain line, pass it on to someone else when the present advantage is exhausted, reposition and catch one's breath and do it all over again. Every now and again every player scores a scoop (try) and the readership (customers, citizenry) score all the time. The do-badders always lose.

Media infighting is not a bore, it's actually quite satisfying for the people trying to forment it and quite amusing for others observing it.

Generalising, during the Hefer Commission, The Media mainly made asses of themselves, during Arms Deal Public Phase The Media made big, but not quite as obvious, asses of themselves. Now that there is another such situation pregnant with the possibility, The Media is already at it once more.

Apart from petty squabbling, The Media is allowing itself to be used and abused by the famous old tricks of, inter alia, The Anonymous Manilla Envelope on the Front Desk; The Off-The-Record Briefing; The Unnamed Expert, The False Pillow Talk, The False Double Source, The Conflict of Interest, The Pathetic Counter-Track and The [(2n) / (2n+1) Counter]-Intelligence Ploy and the Late Night Top-Level Insider - all surely 1st semester courseware in Journalism 101.