Patrick Bond wrote an article on Pambazuka News about the internal conflict that has damaged the reputation of eTV.
Bond is the author of Politics of Climate Justice: Paralysis Above, Movement Below and the editor of Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society.
In the article Bond writes about a deal made between Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel, eTV CEO Marcel Golding and eNews executive Bronwyn Keene-Young to lead the evening news with the story of the opening of President Jacob Zuma’s pet project, the $270 million De Hoop Dam. Golding has since resigned from his post.
Bond writes: “Patel’s ‘ham-fisted attempt at Stasi-style propaganda’ – as the Sunday Business Times described the abuse of power at eNews – makes transparent ‘just how wafer-thin the line really is between powerful people seeking propaganda and the information dished out to the public’.”
Read the article:
Last week SA’s leading alternative to state broadcasting saw its integrity self-destruct. Personality battles are getting most attention but problems caused by structural conflicts of interests must be raised, investigated and resolved, as a leading example of malevolent state-corporate cronyism.
The biggest credibility crisis ever to hit South Africa’s independent media unfolded last week. Fewer than a half-dozen power-crazed corporate managers have destroyed the waning integrity – and in the process, the ownership structure – of the country’s most popular tv news station, eTV, which had aspired to become Africa’s answer to Al-Jazeera. These men are once-radical trade unionists – now gone to pot.
Book details
- Politics of Climate Justice: Paralysis Above, Movement Below by Patrick Bond
Book homepage
EAN: 9781869142216
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- Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society edited by Patrick Bond, Rehana Dada and Graham Erion
Book homepage
EAN: 9781869141417
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