OUR ROLE COMPLETELY OMITTED BY DIE BURGER EDITORS An article ran in Die Burger on 7 December, the day after the ASA ruling, by the journalist Nielen de Klerk (who writes for both Die Burger and Rapport) Ive been speaking with for the last two months and was fully informed and on board. I know that she wanted to break the story of the full extent of our involvement, including all the lobbying work weve been doing behind the scenes with Members of Parliament Stevens Mokgalapa and Steve Swart and the direct pressure weve been putting on FNB CEO Jacques Celliers (and his email to us saying theyd pull even the Steve from Beep Bank ads). But instead, this Facebook page wasnt even mentioned! Our part in the story was removed by the editors and the article she wrote ended up being a small news item about the ruling itself. Theres hope a more in-depth article which tells the whole story will emerge at some point in the future: Nielen will give it a try, but its a long shot. They could have run the article in their Sunday newspaper Rapport if they wanted to, but instead they got another journalist Marcia Klein to write the article, which also didnt mention us. We must ask ourselves why werent we mentioned and why did The Sunday Times also downplay our part? Die Burger could have at a minimum mention our communication with FNB (the pressure and the retraction), as I sent the email evidence to the journalist. Theres no controversy there. The short Die Burger article can be found at (select 7 December and scroll to page 2) pressreader/south-africa/die-burger/20141206/textview while the Rapport article can be reached directly via the link netwerk24/nuus/2014-12-07-stief-behandeling-van-steves-verby
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 10:01:27 +0000