TOM EATON: Dali Mpofu's smackdown with Peter Bruce is not based on fact
'There are some fairly simple ways to tell the difference between a column and a news report'
EXTRACT
Let’s ignore, for a moment, the irony of a politician complaining about someone using emotive language to blur the line between fact and fiction. Let’s also ignore the comedy inherent in somebody denying authoritarian tendencies by writing “ALLOWED” in capital letters, like an official stamp being banged down on an official form in a dingy commissar’s office in a distant corner of a dismal dictatorship.
Let’s ignore them because they distract from one simple fact. Mpofu is entirely correct. Journalists should never be allowed to express their opinions as fact.
Columnists, on the other hand, should be “ALLOWED” to try to hawk our opinions any which way we can.
Dali Mpofu, the frontal lobe of the EFF, had had it with the press. Snatching up his revolutionary phone and firing up revolutionary Twitter, he emptied both revolutionary barrels at the offending writer on Sunday morning. “Today Peter Bruce writes in a column as FACT that ‘One day the EFF will split into nationalist & Marxist-Leninist factions’. He doesn’t even pretend provide [sic] any basis that those ‘tendencies’ exist in the EFF! Are journalists ALLOWED to express their wishful thinking as FACT??” Let’s ignore, for a moment, the irony of a politician complaining about someone using emotive language to blur the line between fact and fiction. Let’s also ignore the comedy inherent in somebody denying authoritarian tendencies by writing “ALLOWED” in capital letters, like an official stamp being banged down on an official form in a dingy commissar’s office in a distant corner of a dismal dictatorship. Let’s ignore them because they distract from one simple fact. Mpofu is entirely co...
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