LETTER: Independent Media titles have declined under unethical Survé

Wittingly or not, reporters, editors and owners have agendas that influence the news. When the Pretoria News insisted, with boss Iqbal Survé, that its SA decuplets story was true, it made all moral journalists ashamed.

This week shame hit a new low as I read the rubbish endorsed by 21 editors at Independent Media in a statement ("Closure of Independent Media’s bank accounts") that bemoaned Standard Bank’s decision to close Sekunjalo’s accounts.

The statement conflates Sekunjalo with Independent Media. Yet Independent Media is a small part of Surve’s claimed $4bn Sekunjalo enterprise.

Closing the accounts is “tantamount to an extreme form of [apartheid] censorship”. What rot. I lived through and fought that censorship; closing bank accounts bears no resemblance.

The statement claims Independent Media is the only media house "truly sympathetic to the plight of the poor". This nonsense makes me angry at its arrogance, lack of logic and trashing of all good journalists working in the many media outlets sympathetic to the poor.

The many newspapers currently in Independent Media’s stable have served SA for over a century. Served well — and badly. In 135 years of serving Johannesburg, The Star made many mistakes, but it opposed apartheid, celebrated 1994, predicted a successful democratic election and earned global respect for its truthful reporting and brilliant photographers.

Sadly, that respect has waned. The Survé years’ lack of ethics has seen the paper decline from a circulation of 250,000 a day to below 25,000, from 200 pages a day to 24.

Sadly, none of the 21 editors stood up to management, declared the decuplets tale a fraud, decried in their columns Ayo’s false valuation to the PIC or insisted on independence from management directives.

Whether Standard Bank closes the accounts or not, I remain ashamed of my former company’s editors’ complicity.

Peter Sullivan

Former editor, The Star. Group editor-in-chief, Independent News Media SA, 2000-2010

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