STATE CAPTURE
TIM COHEN: Bad dream of Afro Worldview ends but battle for truth still on
To the cultural worriers and identity theoreticians who postulate a truthless world: how is that working out for you?
Life is full of rich ironies, but this one is irresistible. The final broadcast by the Gupta propaganda channel took place on the first day of the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture. As a journalist, the demise of any medium depresses me. But as a believer in that much-derided concept of "the truth", I find the demise of a propaganda station encouraging. So goodbye then to ANN7, or Afro Worldview, as it was subsequently known, whose employees were required to kiss the feet of their owner Atul Gupta — and I don’t mean that figuratively. We know this because of the book written by former ANN7 editor Rajesh Sundaram, Indentured — Behind The Scenes At Gupta TV. The book is so extraordinary and shocking, it now feels a bit like waking up from a bad dream. Sundaram, an experienced journalist who had helped launch a whole bunch of television channels, was brought in from India to create the SA channel. He arrived within a few weeks of the famous Gupta wedding, and soon found hi...
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