Tuesday 29 July 2008

What kak

"Qwelane was well within the law but fell foul of the press code."

So says our press ombud.

Seems naive to me.

4 comments:

Paul said...

These things seem to be being dealt with pretty subjectively. Different outcomes based on who is offended. I mean if we look at all the recent cases of hate talk and incitements to violence (The Sun promoting Zenophobia, Bullard's column, the uproar over Chinese qualifying for BEE, Vavi and Malema's comments, and then this), the only one that actually resulted in any form of discipline was Bullard. Admittedly the Vavi and Malema issues were taken slightly more seriously by the SAHRC.... but not really.

Am I just being oversensitive, or are we currently going through a phase in this country where you can offend anybody but the majority race? Minority rights are strong in theory but amount to little in practice?

Paul said...

Just found out that Mr Qwelane has been fired from his other job at News24, so maybe I'm wrong

Dr Phil said...

"Minority rights are strong in theory but amount to little in practice?"

Ask Kelly she's doing a whole PhD on this I think.

What other job did he have that he was fired from? How can an editor publish a column and then fire the dude for the column the editor agreed to publish?!!? Same applies in Bullard's case. It's a clear admission of gross misjudgement, in which case the editor AND the columnist should go. Surely?!

Paul said...

He had a seperate job under a different editor at news24. He was fired from that because of the piece in the Sunday Sun.