Media Flaws

Still remember JQ? The aged-scribe who got booted from news24 for his anti-gay sentiments? Well, Media Flaws will exhume the bugger once in a while. And here's his latest piece:

THESE DAYS there is a rather sordid "debate" which was sparked by what I consider to be the characteristic of lazy journalists everywhere, a tactic fast gaining popularity among local hacks and con¬doned by some editors.

The "debate" was occasioned by unwarranted "interest" in the spousal status of the country's two leading politicians, President Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma, president of the ruling African National Congress.

Zuma, perennial whipping boy of South Africa's so-called "liberal" mainstream newspapers, was recently targeted as having intentions to marry "wife number 5", with lousy and uninformative "reports" claiming there was infighting between his wives about which of them would be First Lady after the elections.

Motlanthe, up to just recently labelled a "level-headed and cool thinker" by the hypocritical and lickspittle mainstream press, was turned upon in very disgusting fashion: an obvious smear linking him to the wrecking of a mansion, causing damage allegedly in the region of R500 000 though the "report" gave no evidence that he had personally had a hand in the destruction, was published.

The inescapable conclusion was that all this was done to damage the reputa¬tions of both men just before the elections.

Now we hear that Motlanthe has two extramarital liaisons, and that one of the young women may be pregnant The president is estranged from his wife. Respected former editor Raymond Louw, justifying the not-yet-proved "public interest" in Motlanthe's private life, went so far as to dredge up the 1980s case of American senator Gary Hart, who eventually withdrew his candidacy for president even though he was the leading contender.

But what Louw conveniently omitted to mention was that Hart, like former British defence minister John Profumo some 20 years earlier, bit the dust not because of their dalliances but because they had lied about the existence of the affairs. Here one could also mention that the reason American senator Edward Kennedy never had a whiff of the White House was because he never came clean about the events at Chappaquidick, leading to the drowning of Mary-Jo Kopechne, with whom he had earlier spent a considerable length of time. Kennedy only reported the matter to the police the following day, when Kopechne was already dead and beyond resuscitation. In a London court case of the 1980s we got to know about Eugene Terre-Blanche's green underpants with holes in them, and about Jani Allen's gnarled toenail and other sordid details of their alleged affair. Those stories sank Terre-Blanche, and since then he has gone from bad to worse, and now he is a non-issue.

MY STRONG suspicions are that the Zuma/Motlanthe "reports" and the mainstream
media's blazing guns are part of an unmistakable pattern which has repeated itself since Patrick Lekota and Sam Shilowa broke away from the ANC to start their own little party. The "lib¬eral" newspapers loved the idea of wrecking the "corrupt and immoral" ANC leadership. The mainstream media are now do¬ing the renegades' dirty work of rub¬bishing the two politicians: they no longer play the ball, but play the man.

Motlanthe's and Zuma's private lives are as much of "public interest" as, say, reports about the frilly lace (or lack of it) on the panties of Shilowa's wife. What I am saying is this: where it can be practically demonstrated that the politicians' marital affairs will interfere with their ability to govern the country properly then, yes, there could be a case for writing and commenting about them - not for salacious reasons and gossip.

Otherwise, private lives are just that. Surely there are still better ways to write and sell newspapers?

* Scanned-in from my crumpled up copy of the Sunday Sun (1 Feb 2009). And no I will not be subject to any copyright violation palaver as I am basing my reproduction of Qwelane's piece on a 1st Sale Doctrine principle - where the buyer can do as they please with what they've 'bought' ie I paid for my Sunday Sun :-)