Media Monday - hot topics and topics that make us hopping mad! 25 July 2011

Here are the top stories for our “Power of the Media” Media Monday Bulletin:

• Julius Malema, the trust fund, the ANCYL’s response and the media
• Oslo attacks: Saturday Star gets it totally wrong
• Case of corporal punishment caught on video
• How you can receive our MMC award?

Juju and the trust fund 

In case you missed the big story over the weekend, the City Press reported yesterday about a trust fund that ANCYL president Julius Malema has allegedly been using to bankroll his lavish lifestyle. The newspaper reported that “(T)he Ratanang Family Trust, named after Malema’s five-year-old son, was registered at the Office of the Master of the High Court in Pretoria on May 13 2008, five weeks after he was elected president of the youth league.”  City Press also revealed are a range of properties that the youth league leader allegedly owns including farms and plots.

This follows media reports about Malema building a R16 million rand house in an upmarket Johannesburg suburb of Sandown, the costs of which he denied. The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) then called the South African Revenue Services (SARS) to investigate Malema’s finances, to which Malema answered “It’s none of your business”, as he said he was “a private person and not bound to be investigated like publicly elected officials”.  Little did he know that City Press was busy putting more effort into the story and investigating who and what the source of Malema’s funds could be.

Malema tried to stop the publication from publishing details about his trust fund by taking City Press to court but failed. Judge Colin Lamont had ruled that Malema was a public figure and that publishing the story was in the public interest.  Justice Lamont went further and said the case reaffirmed the principle of freedom of speech, and that the evidence contained in the City Press story was credible. Quite interesting was that Malema reportedly approached the courts with an argument that his public image could be seriously damaged by the report when he was quoted as saying that he was not a public figure and should not be investigated like publicly elected officials. ANCYL spokesperson Floyd Shivambu also indicated that Malema was “not a public ­representative”. 

Civil rights organization AfriForum has reportedly laid a charge against Mr. Malema following the City Press report, in accordance with the 2004 Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act, and trade union federation COSATU sang the same song as the DA and FF+, calling for allegations about  Malema’s trust to be investigated by the ANC’s committee on ethics and members’ interests, SARS and the SIU.

Constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos sees the matter as a basic black or white situation. According to de Vos, its either Malema restores his credibility by suing City Press for defamation, or he doesn’t which will mean he is guilty. De Vos says that if Malema threatens to sue but never follows up on his threat, or he sues but it turns out that the facts alleged by City Press are more or less true, his credibility will still incur some serious damage. We think such turn of events will also be a major boost to the City Press’s investigative team and to SA media in general to some extent, especially in a era where the country’s media is facing possible legislative censure in the form of a proposed media appeals tribunal (MAT) and the Protection of Information Bill (aka ‘Secrecy Bill’).

The City Press editorial yesterday titled “Media duty to enquire if lifestyle fits the message” condemned the continued racialisation of exposes such as Malema’s and appealed to the public to see the facts as laid before them and decide for themselves, as opposed to being influenced by those who always insist on finding a racist under every rock while refusing to avail themselves for public scrutiny.

We would also like to suggest that in addition to each case being tested on its merits that it should not only be about Malema. It should be a matter of transparency and accountability first and foremost.  Do you think this is the case or is it that our media are just going after Malema? Are our media out to undermine the credibility of certain leaders or are they just doing their job and exposing possible corruption?  

Saturday Star gets Oslo attack story wrong, but maybe justifiably so 

Imagine a publication that is only a few hours away from printing, front page story already in place, and suddenly a huge story breaks in the final hours and the editorial team knows they will be out of their minds not to run with it. If there is a breaking global story, imagine the debate it will cause and the boost they will get for being the first to run with the story, except newswires, broadcast and online media of course. We think that is what happened to the Saturday Star newsroom when it found itself faced with the story about the Oslo attacks.  Unlucky for them the story broke on Friday just hours before publication. A great opportunity for the weekly, but the pressure for more on the story increased the likelihood for errors….

A little background, the story is about twin attacks in the Norway where a massive explosion which ripped through government buildings killed seven people. The bomber was thought to have caught a ferry to nearby Utoeya wearing a police uniform where, according to a witness, he claimed to be investigating the bomb attack and began opening fire with an automatic weapon after beckoning youngsters towards him.  The youth wing of the Labour Party was holding a summer camp for hundreds of youths there. Ninety-one people in total died as a result of the two attacks. These took place on Friday and the Saturday Star reported on them the following day.

Being one of only a few major publications on Saturday, the Saturday Star ran on page 1 and 6 a story titled “Double blast horror stuns Norway capital” on the attacks, but getting a few errors in the process and running with them. Several statements in the paper suggested Muslim links to the attacks. The paper said:

“The attack came just over a year after three men were arrested on suspicion of having links to Al-Qaeda and planning to attack targets in Norway”.

“Denmark has received repeated threats after a newspaper published cartoons of the prophet Mohammad in late 2005, angering Muslims worldwide. The failed December attack in Stockholm was by a Muslim man who grew up in Sweden, but said that he had been angered by Sweden’s involvement in the Nato-led force in Afghanistan and the prophet Mohammad cartoons. That attack was followed weeks later by the arrest in Denmark of five men for allegedly planning to attack the newspaper which first ran the Mohammad cartoons”.

“In July 2010, Norwegian police arrested three men for an alleged plot to organize at least one attack on Norwegian targets and said they were linked to individuals investigated in the US and Britain.”

“Norway has also taken part in the Nato bombing of Libya, whose leader Muammar Gaddafi has threatened to strike back in Europe”.

The newspaper also quoted an expert by the name of David Lea who, according to the paper, is a Western Europe analyst at Control Risks. The analysts said:

“There certainly aren’t any domestic Norwegian terrorist groups, although there have been some Al Qaeda-linked arrests from time to time”.

Don’t these quotes suggest a presumption of Muslim Al Qaeda terrorist involvement? At least that was the impression we got when we read between the lines, but as it turned out, the perpetrator was described as “blond, blue-eyed Anders Behring Breivik, with (a) strong eastern Norwegian accent” and not “some radical Islamic fundamentalist from Pakistan or an ­al-Qaeda sleeper cell, but a single Christian fundamentalist.”  Was this simply an error in judgment due to time and other pressures, was it a classic case of media, perhaps unintentionally, reinforcing stereotypes when it is supposed to be challenging them? How wrong was the Saturday Star on this one? What would you have done if you were in their position?  After all in the paper’s defence, there just was never enough time to verify who was responsible for the attacks, and there was no way they could miss the chance to such a huge breaking story. 

Cellphones expose corporate punishment case 

TimesLIVE reported on shocking cellphone videos that were being circulated showing two school children from Diversity High school in South Hills near Alberton, being beaten by their teachers. The first video shows a Grade 8 boy, being beaten with a hosepipe by the school's principal for arriving late, while the second one show a teacher forcing a pupil's hand into a bucket of cold water and then striking the girl's knuckles with a chalkboard duster. We would like to commend TimesLIVE for not revealing the identities of both kids shown in the videos.

The Gauteng Provincial Department of Education has come out saying that it was horrified by the images and that a precautionary suspension letter against the educator pending an internal disciplinary hearing was issued. While some, especially the department, might argue that the decision was always going to be taken against the educator, we can’t help but note the media’s role in this. Would it have caused such a furore and impact had it not been captured on video, and more especially, not picked up and given such prominence by the media? What do you think?

This also prompts questions on the possession and use of cellphones by learners on school grounds, and whether they should remain on or off during school hours. They may just have sparked positive action in this case, haven’t they? BUT, remember the Jules High sex case in which a girl claimed she was gang raped by two boys while the whole thing was filmed on a cellphone? The mere act of filming the sex, rape or not was an offence.  We also need to consider that cellphone child porn is reportedly on the rise with school going children having access to it. These are some of the arguments against the use of cellphones on school premises as they are used for all the wrong reasons. But what about in cases when the phones expose serious cases such as corporal punishment? Sometimes children are never believed when they report these incidents, and pictures and videos validate their claims.  Perhaps we need to shift the argument away form to have or not have cell phones to how they could be used and how they can be abused as well?  What do you think?

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