Last week’s Mail & Guardian posters seemed to have been taken over by Cell C.
When I saw the first poster, which claimed that ”Thabo” had moved to the network, I was briefly confused. Which Thabo, I wondered?
The penny quickly dropped as the pattern repeated itself. ”Tokyo”, even ”Branson” had all moved, presumably taking their numbers with them.
It was clever marketing, but completely inappropriate. The company had effectively bought editorial space, using the context and style of the posters to market itself with humorous claims about famous people.
The posters pretended to be normal editorial posters, apparently contravening the code of the Advertising Standards Authority, which states that advertisers must ”ensure that anyone who looks at the advertisement is able to see, without reading it closely, that it is an advertisement and not editorial matter”.
Marketers are always eager to blur the lines between news and ads because of the credibility that rubs off on their message. But the credibility borrowed by the marketers is lost to the paper’s editorial reputation. Editorial content should be free from any hint of being for sale or otherwise controlled by vested interests.
Cellphone numbers may have become easily portable, but credibility hasn’t.
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The M&G has played a central role in putting questions about National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi into the public domain.
Last week’s arrest of his friend Glenn Agliotti in connection with the Brett Kebble murder has moved those questions to the top of the public agenda. There have been widespread calls for Selebi’s suspension pending clear answers to those questions, which prompted me to try to make sense of what exactly the allegations are.
There is much at stake here. If there is one figure who must be beyond reproach, it is surely the person who is supposed to lead the fight against crime.
The fact of Selebi’s friendship with Agliotti, accused of being the head of a major crime syndicate and now of murder, is clearly established. Selebi’s own often-quoted words were that the two are friends, ”finish and klaar”.
The commissioner’s attempt to brush off the issue by saying that none of his friends did crime in his presence is inadequate. It’s simply not appropriate for the police chief to have friends in the underworld.
The big question is whether the relationship was simply an error of judgement, or ”something more sinister”, as the paper wrote last week.
The evidence for actual wrong- doing by Selebi is more diffuse. Over the months, the main claims have been:
l That the Scorpions are investigating Selebi.
l That he knew Kebble, whose own links to criminal networks are being investigated, better than he admits.
l That Selebi was paid R50 000 by an associate of Kebble and Agliotti. This is the most direct claim against him, first published in the Sunday Times. The M&G then quoted the informer on the matter, but attached a prominent label: ”Read with caution.”
l That a shadowy private security group, Palto, did freelance work for the police, but is suspected of having exploited relations with the police to benefit a crime syndicate. The paper has said that Palto claimed to do work at Selebi’s direct request and that its head had direct access to him.
Some other evidence does not go very far — what does it signify, for instance, that Kebble copied him a letter written to the justice minister? There’s no smoking gun here, even though Selebi clearly has questions to answer. His position dictates that even the slightest whiff of an allegation needs to be taken seriously.
Journalists writing about these issues need to be precise and careful. So far, reporting has relied too heavily on woolly terms such as ”links” or claims that somebody is ”close to” another group or individual. Even in this murky area, it is important to describe relationships as precisely as possible. There have been other instances where vague hints have been dropped. The arrest of one associate, wrote the M&G, ”may have implications for” Selebi. What implications?
If there is information showing that Selebi’s relationship was more than just a mistake, it must be set out clearly. The problem with vague hints is that it becomes too easy for the substantive issues to be dismissed, not just by those who have questions to answer, but also by readers. And they’re the ones that really matter.
The Mail & Guardian’s ombud provides an independent view of the paper’s journalism. If you have any complaints you would like addressed, you can contact Krüger at [email protected]. You can also phone the paper on (011) 250 7300 and leave a message.