South African media files complaint over op-ed

One of South Africa’s leading news websites has lodged a complaint with the country’s press council, accusing another media company of trying to discredit journalists investigating the site’s owner’s business practices.

News24 and industry analysts claimed the independent media group failed to respect the “firewall” that usually exists between owners and editorial departments.

Independent Media is a multi-platform company that owns numerous newspapers and websites. News24 alleges that it used these publications to publish popular articles targeting critics, including op-eds that News24 claimed were written under false bylines and in an attempt to discredit other journalists.

The controversy comes after independent media website IOL published an op-ed comparing News24 legal reporter Karyn Maughan to a Nazi propagandist.

Mohn regularly reports on the court case involving Iqbal Survé, chairman of South African private equity firm Sekunjalo. Suvi is challenging in court decisions by several major banks to close his company’s accounts on the grounds that they pose a “reputational risk”.

A March 3 op-ed by Edmond Phiri accused Mohn of unfairly reporting on Suvi’s legal woes.

An image accompanying the article depicted Maughan, who is white, standing in front of an apartheid flag and accused her of racism in her coverage of black-owned company Sekunjalo.

Mohn’s colleagues lamented the op-ed’s popularity.

Pieter du Toit, News24’s assistant editor responsible for investigations, told VOA they had sought legal advice and lodged a complaint with the Press Council.

He said the complaint would be “one of the first, if not the first, time a media company has filed a complaint against another media company.”

“The interests of independent company owner Iqbal Survé and those of the media company have become so closely intertwined that they have become completely inseparable,” he added.

A News24 investigation published in March said Survé was “waging a public relations war, using a cadre of compliant journalists, publicists and seemingly fictitious opinion writers to burnish his own image and attack journalists who criticize him.”

The investigation found no evidence that a writer named Edmund Phiri was living in South Africa. When News24 contacted the independent media’s editor-in-chief to ask for the columnist’s contact details, they were given the address of an encrypted email service.

When they wrote to Phiri requesting an interview, they received a strangely worded response that one digital analyst said appeared to be partly written by artificial intelligence.

“It is very clear to us from the evidence that we have been able to gather… that this writer and other writers did not exist as human beings at all,” Du Toit said.

“The only conclusion we can draw is that these are bot and/or artificial intelligence generated opinion pieces, or opinion pieces written under pseudonyms purely for the purpose of discrediting and attacking another media outlet.”

News24 is not the first to accuse independent media of using fake writers. Journalist Ferial Haffajee wrote a similar article in Daily Maverick in 2022, citing a report by Code for Africa, a nonprofit data journalism lab.

The report found no evidence of the existence of an independent media writer named “Jamie Rhodes” who had also published articles defending Secundjalo’s business interests.

Independents’ response

Asked for a response to the News24 investigation, Independent Media editor-in-chief Adri Senekal De Wet referred VOA to a statement from Secundjalo.

“This article is yet another attempt to discredit and undermine Sekunjalo, Independent Media and its chairman, Dr. Iqbal Survé. These accusations are based on innuendo and lack any concrete evidence, and are roundly dismissed by Sekunjalo,” the statement said.

“We categorically reject the baseless and ridiculous claims made by News24 that independent media opinion writers are part of a ‘PR’ campaign by Sekunjalo or our chairman,” it continued. “As the article suggests, any suggestion that a media group chairman controls and manages the editorial process is laughable and unfounded.”

In addition to this statement, the independent media published a follow-up op-ed by Phiri, refuting News24’s claims that he was not real.

“This is an outright lie and they have no credible evidence to back it up. News24’s claims are an attempt to reduce my opinion piece to some PR control,” the column read.

The op-ed again criticized News24 along racial lines, saying: “Deploying an army of journalists and online investigators to track me down rather than engage with the substance of my arguments is a violent intimidation tactic, Reminiscent of apartheid-era crackdowns on dissent.” Opinion. “

Female journalists targeted

Media analysts said Moyn’s op-ed was part of a broader trend of female journalists being harassed or discredited.

“It is unacceptable that such an abusive and disappointing article should be allowed to be published. Reggy Moalusi, director of the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF), told VOA that media owners always They are discouraged from using their publications to achieve such nefarious purposes.

SANEF noted earlier this month that female journalists in South Africa are often the target of bullying.

In its op-ed about Moeen, SANEF noted that “the article goes beyond the scope of a publication that provides someone with a platform to express their views,” adding that “the accompanying image/graphic in the article features a gun being pointed at images of her, which clearly indicate an intent to incite violence against her.”

Editors’ forum acknowledges harassment faced by female journalists, including cyberbullying.

Anton Harber, a former journalism professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said female journalists in South Africa were more likely to be targeted than their male counterparts.

Such attacks, he said, “are harmful to journalism as a whole, because we all know journalism is in the midst of a global credibility crisis.”

Referring to the Survé case, Haber said it showed “the complete breakdown of the wall that was supposed to be there, or the barrier that was supposed to be between owners, publishers and the press.”

News24’s Du Toit said the media group was awaiting a response from the Press Council to the complaint lodged on Monday. The commission can forward complaints to the ombudsman, who adjudicates cases and has the power to demand retractions or an apology.