Appeal Decision: City Press vs Premier of Limpopo

SUMMARY

The headline to the story in dispute read, Limpopo premier stall on corruption report (published on 22 April 2018).

This ruling by the Chair of the Appeals Panel Judge Bernard Ngoepe was based on the Press Code that was in effect before 30 September 2022.

The article said that Limpopo Premier Stan Mathabatha had been accused of not acting on a report by the provincial Department of Treasury regarding a multi-million-rand corruption tender awarded by the Department of Health “under his close ally, MEC Phopi Ramathuba” that could have led to criminal charges against senior government officials.

The gist of the complaint was that the “report” which City Press said it based its story on did not exist. The Premier also complained that several statements in the story were inaccurate, false, unfair, distorted and misleading, that the headline was false and unsubstantiated, and that the article attributed quotes to one Seloba which he had never given. The reportage was said to be harmful to its reputation and its administration.

The newspaper was given ample time to prove that the journalist did contact Seloba – but it failed to provide any such evidence.

City Press was directed to unreservedly apologise to:

• Mathabatha for wrongly and unfairly portraying him as sitting on a report that required urgent and serious action, both in the headline and in the text, without supplying the necessary context; and
• Seloba for attributing statements to him that he never made, and for falsely stating that he had communicated with him.

The newspaper applied for leave to appeal.

Judge Ngoepe said he was impressed with the way the issues were analysed and dealt with. He singled out the point that the story created confusion by failing to distinguish between the preliminary report (which Seloba agreed existed) and the alleged unsigned final report by Treasury (which Seloba indicated had never been received by the respondent).

He inter alia added that the:

• Premier could not have “stalled” on the final report because the two reports could not have possibly been released at the same time;
• story gave the impression that a queried tender was awarded under MEC Ramathuba, when that had not been the case; in fact, she was appointed to the portfolio only after the award; and
• newspaper was unreasonable to have asked the Ombud for a further extension to prove that the journalist did contact Seloba.

The application for leave to appeal was dismissed.

THE RULING ITSELF

In the matter between

CITY PRESS                                                                             APPLICANT

AND

1. In their Ruling dated 25 September 2018, the Press Ombud and two other members of his tribunal found that City Press (“applicant”) had contravened sections 1.1 (in three instances) and 1.2 of the Press Code.  The Ruling followed a complaint on behalf of the Premier of Limpopo (“respondent”) in respect of the story which appeared in the applicant’s edition of 22 April 2018, with the headline “Premier of Limpopo stall on corruption”. The content of the story was that the respondent had sat on a damming report indicating some corruption, and thus failing to act.  The respondent’s spokesperson Mr Phuti Seloba, disputed this. According to him, the only report that had come out was a preliminary report, which was yet to be finalized.  The applicant argued that there was a subsequent and final report, which it had seen and which had been issued by the Provincial Treasury but which had, however, not  been signed.  Mr Seloba denied knowledge of the existence of this report. Another complaint by Mr Seloba was that he was not contacted by the journalist, while the latter insisted that he did speak to him.
2. As said above, the Ruling held that the applicant breached the  said sections of the Code, and imposed a sanction.  The appellant now seeks leave to appeal the Ruling.  The application will only succeed if it has reasonable prospects of success.  This is what I should determine.
3. I have read the Ruling and I am impressed with the way the issues were analysed and dealth with. For example and in particular, the point was made that the story created confusion by failing to distinguish between the preliminary report (which Seloba agreed existed) and, on the other hand, the alleged unsigned final report by Treasury which Seloba indicated had never been received by the respondent.  This was a very serious problem with the story and resulted in an unfair and inaccurate reportage, amongst others. Looking at the headline, and the gist of the story (that the Premier sat on an incriminating report for two years without taking any action), the failure to distinguish between the two reports was a material defect in the story, justifying a complaint; for example, assuming that the Premier “stalled”  for two years with the preliminary report, he could not have “stalled” on the final report because the two could not have possibly been released at the same time as there would have been a time lapse between the two. The applicant’s case is made worse by the fact that it cannot make a case that the respondent did nothing after receiving the preliminary report (we know he was waiting for the final one before taking steps against anybody). There is one other aspect in respect of which the story was wrong: it gave the impression that a queried tender was awarded under MEC Ramathuba, when this was not the case; in fact, she was appointed to the portfolio only after the award. That applicant’s argument that the inaccuracies were the result of the respondent’s and Ramathuba’s failure to respond, cannot said: they do not write the story, the journalist does.
4. There is one point I need to refer to raised by the applicant in this application. In response to Seloba’s denial that the journalist spoke to him, the applicant asked the Ombud for an opportunity to produce a record (apparently from the network concerned) of the calls made.  This opportunity was granted, and even extended; still, no such record was produced, and the Ruling was finalized and handed down. The applicant now complains that the tribunal should have waited further.  The first problem is that apart from the journalist’s version, there was nothing objective on the basis of which the Ombud could justifiably delay the Ruling even further (after an extension). This leads to the second problem: for how long should the resolution of the matter have been delayed? The following appears in the application before me: “City Press is still trying to get the said cell phone records and until such time that the records are available, we believe that the Ombudsman cannot make a definite finding on the matter to say City Press never spoke to Seloba just because Seloba says so.

City Press therefore requests the appeal be granted to enable it to get the said cell phone records which will adequately and fairly put the matter to rest of whether City Press spoke to Seloba or not”. It is clear from the above statement, several months after the complaint was lodged (and indeed the hearing of the matter by the tribunal) that the record sought is still not at hand.  A line needed to be drawn; and the Rulingcorrectly did. The fundamental objective of the Complaints Procedure is that matters be disposed of as expeditiously as possible.

5. The application therefore fails for the reasons given in the Ruling, and in light of my comments above.

Dated this 9^th day of November 2018

Judge B M Ngoepe, Chair, Appeals Panel