THE first casualty in war is the truth, and saying this doesn't help the fact that not only has our daily press failed to distance itself from the conflict, many journos actively transgress the boundaries of objectivity and reason. Immediately following the 7 October 'Simchat Torah' massacre, inv...

IN 2018 I wrote an opinion piece warning, that closure of debate, in particular the gutting of letters pages of titles published by IOL would lead to ruin. The job of a free press is to reflect public opinion, to guide and mediate popular discourse. As a media freedom watchdog put it: "The backbo...

INDEPENDENT Media have been forced to apologise for their smear campaign. "During March 2020 Daily News published an article titled ‘Daily Maverick asked me to write and do negative tweets about Dr Iqbal Survé’ in print and on its digital platform within Independent Online. The article accused Da...

IN A RECENT interview with JJ Tabane, IOL chairman Iqbal Survé claimed that his company had been cleared by its own internal Ombudsperson. In essence Piet Rampedi's Decuplets story was both misleading and true at the same time, necessitating a man-hunt for 10 non-existent babies and their missing...

LAST WEEK JJ Tabane provided the owner of Independent Media, one Iqbal Survé, with airtime to tackle a column written by Anton Harber essentially calling for an advertising boycott of the group. The two have been at loggerheads since the publication of a now discredited multi-baby "decuplets" sto...