I have been very supportive of the Media in their campaign to put an end to or at least amend the proposed secrecy bill that has been proposed by the Government. I think the media has been doing a great job in exposing and blowing the whistle with regards to misconduct in State Departments and its ability to bring to task, many Individual Officials who have stepped out of line.
Unfortunately, the Media has been very biased through the last decade with regards to their exposure of corruption in the Private Sector. It makes economic sense for newspapers and Radio Stations to turn a blind eye when a large corporate steps out of line. Therefore you will seldom hear or read about price fixing in the Banking Sector or the scandalous exploitation of natural resources in other African countries by some of our biggest Mining Groups. The reason for this being mainly: Advertising revenue. If A media – outlet disgraces a Corporate, the group will pull their entire advertising budget from the publication or radio station.
The same could be said for all the recent debacles that Mnet had to deal with. Remember that Mnet, is part of the same holding company that actually owns a majority of South Africa’s newspapers. When the Citizen, exposed a very disturbing issue with regards to the false advertising and the disappointment of Deena Naidoo and his so called R8 million Rand in winnings and his own Restaurant, even John Robbie from 702, jumped on the bandwagon to try and discredit the Citizen (who still stands by their story).
If Mnet was a governmental organisation every single newspaper in this country including radio stations would have smelled a rat, and would have dug deeper into finding the truth. But since this is a large corporate, there is a deafening silence. One journalist from the Beeld newspaper, even went as far as to jokingly chat with her friends on Facebook about the “knock and drop” publication (the Citizen), whilst she openly showed her support for Mnet.
This after she wrote an article in the Beeld Newspaper where she stated that Deena has won his own Restaurant!
The media also does not tell you that Mnet has made a killing from Masterchef SA with one of the most watched locally produced shows in history, combined with enormous advertising revenue profits. A journalist with real balls, would have taken notice and would have done some real investigation, instead of relying on the word of one of Mnet’s spokespeople, in this case Ingrid Engelbrecht.
It also makes me wonder, why the media has been so silent regarding all the complaints received about the Idols South Africa show. Since day one, viewers have picked up that Khaya Mthethwa has been promoted to win this years competition.
Also it has come to light that the group Mthethwa belongs to (Joyous Celebration) has had enormous success in the past, selling hundreds of thousands of CD’s. Therefore Mthethwa as one of the lead singers of the group has had an enormous established fan base for years.
The media also does not want to tell you that the new Owner of Universal Music, Lindelani Mkhize (who is sponsoring the winner with amongst other things, a record deal) is one of the founders of Joyous Celebration. He is also the conductor of their choir! And Randall Abrahams' involvement as a judge is also strange. He has suddenly been given a position at Universal Music.
It appears to me that Khaya Mthethwa does not need Mnet or Idols to excel in his career and even get a recording deal on his own in the Gospel industry. It appears more that Mnet and Universal needs Khaya, to boost their viewership and therefore increase their advertising revenue, income from voting etc. The poor Khaya will be thrown at the wolves, once he wins this competition, probably having to perform secular music, that he is clearly not comfortable at doing. Yet again the media, instead of digging further just runs with promoting Khaya. I was laughing when I heard the desperate attempts of amongst others Eusebius Mckaiser of 702 trying to discredit other contestants and to promote Khaya. For an investigative journalist on a talk radio station famous for their digging into public sector corruption, this man is either very naïve or just openly ignorant.
I don’t care about the personal rumours surrounding Khaya or any attempt to discredit him personally. However, this is a dare to any journalist out there that have the balls to put one and one together, and run with a story. This story is something that smells so much of corruption and nepotism that it literally stares you in the face.
If you can expose misconduct in the government, you can also expose misconduct in the Corporate World. Has the media in South Africa lost its ability to do proper investigative journalism? Or are they afraid of those big Corporations that basically hold the media hostage?
What goes for the goose must go for the gander. Otherwise all your attempts to squash the proposed Secrecy Bill smell of pure Hypocrisy!
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