People often accuse journalists of profiting from the misfortune of others. So do private hospitals, except they do much better. According to Business Day, the Hospital Association of South Africa, which represents the private hospital industry, is stepping up its campaign to convince the government not to regulate private hospital fees. It is arguing that […]
Robert Brand
Robert Brand teaches media law, ethics and economics journalism at Rhodes University. Before joining academia, he worked as a journalist for the Pretoria News, the Star and Bloomberg News.
Posted inBusiness, Media, News/Politics
The paranoid Mr Zuma
Daniel Gross, financial columnist for online magazine Slate, bumped into Jacob Zuma at Davos this week and nominated him as “the world leader with the most aggressive bodyguards“. It seems that Mr Zuma’s paranoia is not limited to the remote possibility of being molested in the Swiss Alps. He also believes the media in his […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media, News/Politics
The Christian fundamentalist lynch mob is at it again
Having tasted victory against Tim du Plessis and Rapport, Christian fundamentalists have set their sights on a fresh target. According to Jacques Liebenberg in Beeld, a campaign is under way to organise a boycott of the film The Golden Compass, due to be released in South Africa on Friday. According to an anonymous message distributed […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
Johncom may have a winner in the Times
Johncom, soon to be renamed Avusa, has for the first time released details about the cost of its two new print titles, the Weekender and the Times. The company spent R33-million from April to September improving its online offerings and launching the two new titles, CEO Prakash Desai said during the company’s interim results announcement […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, News/Politics
The devil made Tim do it
Rapport editor Tim du Plessis has given us a new version of Voltaire’s famous defence of free speech: “I don’t agree with what you say, but I’ll defend your right to say it, unless it harms my employer’s commercial interests, in which case I’ll shut you up quicker than you can say ‘editorial independence’.” Du […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Media
Get me a fake Springbok jersey!
Canterbury, the Springbok kit sponsor, is complaining that “counterfeit” goods are damaging its business and could lead to job losses. What hogwash! Canterbury’s argument, a familiar complaint by branded-goods manufacturers, is based on a false assumption: that people would buy the “official” goods if alternatives — the far cheaper “fakes” — were not available. For […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Another day, another journalist (or two) jailed
Two senior journalists have been arrested for leaking information about a criminal investigation into the alleged unlawful publication of a government official’s home address. Zimbabwe? South Africa? United States, actually. Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey of the Phoenix New Times were jailed last week when they revealed that they had been subpoenaed by a grand […]
Posted inGeneral, Media, News/Politics
Newspapers without government … How about that, Mr President?
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States of America, once famously said: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” That was before he became president. After he’d experienced a taste of […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Editor, journalist to be arrested … or are they?
Was the Sunday Times guilty of crying wolf when it reported that its editor and another journalist would be arrested on charges of contravening the National Health Act? On Sunday, the newspaper reported that editor Mondli Makhanya and deputy managing editor Jocelyn Maker would be arrested this week on charges related to the theft of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
What’s in a name?
Grahamstown, the city which I call home, is in danger of losing its name. This has been in the pipeline for some time, but the whole thing flared up again when President Mbeki called Colonel John Graham, after whom the town is named, a butcher; and the excellent local newspaper Grocott’s Mail has been running […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
You didn’t get this from me …
Al Neuharth, the founder of USA Today, the United States’s largest newspaper, once remarked that “anonymous sources are the root of all evil in journalism”. That may have been an overstatement, but not by much. In many cases, journalists can’t do their jobs without using anonymous sources; often, however, they are simply an excuse for […]
Posted inMedia
American journalism isn’t all bad: why I love the New York Times
American journalism has many ills, but the great American newspapers — the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times — remain magnificent examples of the medium. I used to be an Anglophile newspaper reader, starting my day with the Guardian and the Independent, but I hardly ever visit those two sites these […]