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/ 20 October 2003

You do not want to be branded a propagandist in these parts, son.

There’s an obvious danger in undertaking an in-depth cover piece on the chief of government’s communications apparatus. When one is reporting for an audience of media professionals, a significant percentage of whom are editors and journalists trained in the watchdog paradigm, one runs the unsettling risk of being written off as a lapdog of the leadership, a pawn for politicos, a flunky of the ruling faction.

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/ 20 October 2003

Exxon moves to polish its image

ExxonMobil has been holding a series of secret meetings with environmental and human rights groups worldwide in an effort to change its hard-nosed public image.
The moves have been seized on by the Stop Esso campaign as a sign that its boycott activities aimed at changing the company’s anti-Kyoto treaty views are working.

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/ 20 October 2003

Adams reaches career-best seven

Left-arm spinner Paul Adams took a career-best 7-128 as South Africa restricted Pakistan’s first-innings total on the third day of the first Test at Gaddafi stadium on Sunday. Adams snapped five wickets to bring Pakistan’s innings to a close on 401 after the home side had been 346-5 at lunch.

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/ 20 October 2003

The Bloody Horse

Fiction, or faction, that novelist’s blend of verifiable information and original spin, has a place in our magazine culture that writers have yet to reclaim. Can Themba, Casey Motsisi, Bloke Modisane and other Drum writers perfected a style of social realism that was perfectly compatible with a commercial format. Graeme Addison tackles the central problematic of the black magazine press: where are the menacing truths of modern South Africa?

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/ 20 October 2003

Thommo: ‘We were sore’

Steve Thompson was surrounded by so many journalists in the Sheraton Hotel, Melbourne tonight, that he joked about losing weight in the sauna-like conditions. But the cuddly England hooker, sent out to face the press pack before Sunday’s penultimate Pool C clash against Samoa, barely broke a sweat as he handled the trickiest of questions.

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/ 20 October 2003

For Better, For Worse

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” said science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. When you watch a magazine go straight from the computer screen to the final printing plate, you would tend to agree. But, asks Megan Chronis, is this black or white magic we’ve seen practised in publishing over the last 20 years?