Three senior e.tv editorial staff have resigned as staff relations become even more tense at the free-to-air broadcaster. A recent punch-up did little to improve morale.
Former political reporter Marion Edmunds and investigative reporter Faizel Cook worked their last day on Wednesday. eBusiness presenter Vanashree Govender has also tendered her resignation. The resignations come hot on the heels of the departure of former head of news Jimi Mathews and eArts presenter Roger Lucey.
Kanthan Pillay, e.tv’s head of corporate affairs, confirmed the resignations, but referred queries to the individual staffers. Pillay said he was not worried about the departures. “Journalists have an exaggerated sense of themselves. All of us are replaceable, including myself.”
In June the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) ordered e.tv to reinstate and cough up R84 000 in back pay to Barbara Boswell, the assignments editor sacked for gross insubordination for questioning a decision by Pillay, then news executive director.
Boswell is one of several staff who fell foul of what has been described as “cowboy-style management”. Her CCMA case was one of eight complaints that have been lodged against e.tv since January last year.
Those who have left the station include: reporters Guy Oliver, Donald Chauke and Anton Snyman; programme controller Ilse van Schalkwyk; commercial director Quentin Green; sports personality Edward Griffiths; two senior financial and marketing managers; and at least four sales executives.
Meanwhile, the Mail & Guardian has been told how a disagreement between two sports reporters, which e.tv sports editor Eben Jansen tried to mediate, got out of hand in the parking lot of the Cape Town offices. Jansen apparently head-butted Craig Marais, who ended up with a bleeding nose.
Jansen has dismissed the allegations. “I absolutely deny this … I have been accused of many things.” Pillay said he was not aware of the incident.
This is not the first unsavoury behaviour that has been attributed to Jansen. Last August the Sunday Times reported that he had to apologise to management for taking a carpenter’s hammer to car wheel clamps for two days in a row in e.tv’s Cape Town parking lot. In June City Press sports editor Dominic Chimhavi reported in his soccer World Cup diary: “The flight was painful as two e.tv presenters, Eben Jansen and Tshepo Mabona, were a nuisance throughout the journey as they sang and shouted at the top of their voices.”
In addition to e.tv’s labour relations difficulties and high staff turnover, the station is also said to be struggling under financial strains. Having won the right to broadcast the soccer World Cup in Japan-South Korea, the station sold satellite broadcast rights to the pay channel Supersport after struggling to secure sufficient sponsorship.