THIS week IOL waded into yet another ‘multibaby’ scandal, this time involving the identity of an account on social media platform X.com. The manner in which the news group deals with facts raises a number of questions regarding ‘press privilege’ and its latest antics must be condemned as an abuse of press freedom.
For starters, the news group was forced to issue a hasty public apology for fingering a KZN comedian, who they claimed was part of a ‘conspiracy involving apartheid-era stratcom agents.’ This resulted in R1.2 million defamation lawsuit filed against it. IOL were given two weeks to respond.
Online personality The Kiffness tweeted:
“Inexcusable defamation from @IOL.
@IqbalSurve, you can’t keep making unsubstantiated claims about people & get away with”
Here is how the IOL apology read:
“We previously reported and posted that the person behind the Goolammv X account was Mohammed Yacoob Vawda, a UKZN lecturer, SABC radio personality, and stand-up comedian. We were mistaken, and confirm that he is not the person behind that account. We unreservedly retract the accusation and apologise to Mohammed Yacoob Vawda and his family. Please desist from directing threats and abuse at him.”
Yes IOL are clowns, the dangerous kind.
Not only were IOL dead-wrong about the identity of @Goolammv, but their shoddy attempt to correct their mistake by spinning the story as just a minor hiccup, a silly detail involving mistaken identity, by literally going through the telephone book, to presumably finger another man, merely confirms the group has waltzed straight from a ‘multibaby’ into a ‘multi-comedian’ scandal. The group proceeded to run stories alleging connections to a “sock puppet operated by an individual with connections to high-profile politicians and senior government officials.”
So far as editorial were concerned it was enough to name anybody with a government connection or problematic past to throw shade. Take one public comment on the story and the resulting headline: ‘Ismail Abramjee Concedes Goolammv Identity Following Investigation’, a piece of yellow journalese that revolves around Abramjee’s comments on ‘Goolam Mohammed Sulieman Vawda’, which took the trouble to note the social media activist actually ‘used his real name and initials’.
Not exactly, anonymity nor a ‘cloak and dagger’ operation as Survé would have it?
Another post on July 18 deploys the Renaldo Gouws controversy while claiming the tweeters ambition is to “KILL” the entire black-owned Group’. Allegations include a ‘plot by commentators to subvert our democracy’. The element of treason seems a bit far-fetched and contrived considering IOL is a privately owned company while Gouws is a member of Parliament.
What has lead to this astonishing loss of editorial oversight?
The comedy of errors really begins after CEO Iqbal Survé was once again challenged on his failure to ‘pay back the SACTWU money’. That’s right, money borrowed (and never paid back) from a union pension fund which was used to orchestrate a buyout of the Independent Group from previous owner’s Tony O’Reilly. The R300 million loan was frozen indefinitely following a decision gained by the company in it’s favour. Bear in mind the loan still exists and the decision does not bar citizens from asking such questions.
Survé at first attempted to deflect attention from public questions on X.com by claiming without any supporting evidence, that @Goolammv was an ‘apartheid agent’ (or as it appears, somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody else who may have been fingered as an agent?)
This writer was party to the thread and witnessed the sequence of events which lead up to the IOL story by a paid hack.
Following the incident Survé now claims “@goolammv Goolam Muhammed Suliman Vawda is a charlatan, tender entrepreneur, money launderer connected to powerful politicians”. Zero details about the person concerned other than Survé is upset.
The claims seem absurd and licentiousness given freedom of speech within the public sphere. It is clear Survé perceives a need to abuse his position, to target his critics, to avoid such questions. Whither the right of reply? Worse the calumny follows a now well-established pattern of abuse within the group in which journalists are fed information by management. Instead of content flowing up a chain of editorial command it flows down into the ranks, via its owner. [Note: following my comments here, IOL suddenly announced it was rolling out its ‘Thought Leader’ section, which is just shy of hiring Anton Harber].
Survé’s social media feed increasingly relies on dubious sources, scurrilous rumours and unsubstantiated information, for example one Mehmet Dag, an Egyptian expat and one-man political party, is a regular contributor, who calls Survé “his brother”. Dag also claims to have a dossier on various conspiracies involving local politicians.
Readers may remember Dag as the man behind a campaign to remove LGBTIQ rights from our constitution alongside the rainbow crossing in Green Point.
Survé’s latest attention-seeking suggests that IOL sources are in reality Boswell Wilkie clowns.
UPDATE: IOL now claims that ‘charges have been laid’ against the ‘creator of notorious X account ‘goolammv’’ supposedly by a ‘senior media editor not affiliated with the Independent Media Group.’ The article does not name the individual nor does it carry any details of what these charges are, other than he is accused of ‘terrorising’ politicians and business leaders via his X.com account. Last time I checked, asking uncomfortable questions via X.com, a platform which prides itself on freedom of speech, was not considered a crime in the Republic.
UPDATE: News24 hits back with ‘Suspect’ Survé, top editors face criminal probe for Goolam gaffe “Media baron Iqbal Survé and some editors in his upper echelon face a criminal investigation for doxing the wrong man in their much-vaunted “unmasking project”.
UPDATE: Survé socks it to News24 statements seem to fudge the defamation case reported elsewhere while making wild allegations. Should Survé hand himself into a mental asylum?
