In December 2021, we sent a complaint of the 10 most recent defamatory attacks on Daily Maverick and its senior leaders published on Iqbal Online, er, IOL. After many weeks of sitting on the submission, IOL, after requesting more time, chose not to submit any response. On 16 February 2022, Independent Media’s ombud, Yogas Nair, and its panel declined to pursue our complaints because of the IOL nonresponse after a publicly declared ambition by the Survé fiefdom to pursue legal challenges on SA media. Essentially, IOL has vaguely threatened to sue entire free media, therefore its ombudsman will not function any more. ~ Styli Charambolous Daily Maverick 9/3/2022
Yogas Nair has been made Independent Media’s Executive: New Business Development and Strategy, beginning 1 August 2022. ~ IOL 4/8/2022
*On 10 March 2020, I broke the news on this website that, for more than a year, Sekunjalo Independent Media had been concealing the truth about the membership and functioning of its Internal Ombudsman unit. The headline was Fake news alert: Independent Media’s ombudsman has left the building.
The veracity of the article was not disputed and that section of the IOL website was ‘under construction’ for the next 11 months until Yogas Nair was announced as the new internal ombudsman on 5 April 2021.
It took just six months for her credibility to be destroyed by her employer and now she has been moved sideways.
In June last year, after Sekunjalo had been forced to apologise to Maria Ramos, Nair was challenged by Dario Milo to once again place the Indy newspapers under the jurisdiction of the SA Press Council.
In response Nair wrote articles assuring the company’s audience and her colleagues that ‘accountability is sacrosanct’ at Sekunjalo Independent Media which epitomised, she led us to believe, the essence of press freedom.
I was uncomfortable reading that because, in nationally-televised and under-oath testimony, we were assured by former AYO senior executive Siphiwe Nodwele that Iqbal Survé dictates editorial content and the reporters simply do as they are told – if they are not to suffer the fate of former Sunday Independent editor, Wally Mbhele.
That was corroborated by another former AYO employee Kevin Hardy and by the former and current Sekunjalo and ANA reporters – requesting anonymity – who made their concerns known to the SANEF inquiry into media ethics.
On 28 October last year with what I perceived to be an insouciant shrug, Survé destroyed any claim of accountability being sacrosanct at Sekunjalo Independent Media, humiliating Nair in the process.
What became known, subsequent to the ‘Q-anon’ media conference, was that both Yogas Nair and human rights lawyer and acting judge Michael Donen had called for the censure of Pretoria News editor Piet Rampedi for his ‘Tembisa Ten’ claim which was without precedent in medical history and which brought South African journalism into international disrepute.
When questioned about this, Survé’s response – as I see it – made Nair’s continued role as head of the company’s ombud unit untenable: “Mr Rampedi’s piece was a ‘feel good’ – we should cut him some slack. He is not everyone’s favourite person; he made a mistake.”
If you can, with such a cynical display of on-the-record public contempt, laugh off the considered deliberations of your own multi-member ombud team, what’s the point of having such a supposed ethical guardrail in the first place?
The difference between the Sekunjalo Internal Ombudsman and the SA Press Council is that the latter has earned public trust since it was established in its present form in 2007. The media companies which accept its jurisdiction also accept its findings if their appeals have failed and they apologise when instructed to do so.
This is particularly relevant and topical at the moment given the defamation judgment in favour of Daily Maverick on 15 August with IOL being more than happy to regurgitate the defendant’s garbage in/garbage out fake news accounts – see here and here.
Read more: Rebecca Davis on the court ruling against Modibe Modiba for his defamatory story about the publication
This brings to mind this unchallenged assertion by the former political editor of the Cape Times, Dougie Oakes – ‘I’ve never come across a group where lies have been peddled with such glib assurance’ quote and unquote.
This also raises an obvious question – when, if ever, will Modibe Modiba’s defamatory lies be removed from the IOL website?
What the anchor quote to this article by Styli Charambolous makes clear is that Sekunjalo Independent Media feels that it can defame rival media companies, their employees and members of the public with impunity, leaving those so impugned with only the courts as recourse – see here and here.
I was relieved for Nair’s sake when Sekunjalo Independent Media made the announcement on 4 August that she had been moved sideways to a different position within the company with her new tenure having begun on 1 August.
I logged on to the Group Ombud section of the IOL website to see who had replaced her and I was deeply disturbed but not surprised by what I found.
The IOL website, to its shame, still lists Val Boje, the former and much respected editor of the Pretoria News as a member of the Appeals Panel in the Sekunjalo ombud team.
Val Boje died in October last year, something one assumes Survé is aware of because his company livestreamed her funeral service.
She deserved better than this from a once-respected newspaper company that she served with distinction for 40 years.
Ed Herbst is a retired reporter.
* Opinions expressed in posts published on The Media Online are not necessarily those of Arena Africa or the editor but contribute to the diversity of voices in South Africa.
