By Hassen Lorgat
Two days ago, I replied to the Public advocate at the Press Ombuds Office. In my Reply to Respondents Reply dated 25 August 2025 I informed the Ombuds office that the complaint against the two media houses The Citizen and The Sunday Times must be adjudicated by the ombud.
In the main, the two newspapers argued that they have fully complied with the demands of the Press Code of South Africa. Although I did not agree. I told them that whilst they see the funding of journalism by an outside organisation and in this case the Zionist Federations affiliate is not a minor issue but a major transgression of the code. This was recently confirmed by the commentary of a former ombud Dr Johan Retief, writing in Muslim Views called it a scandal and lambasted both these media houses and the SAJBD for their major transgressions.
Violating the ABC of journalism or specifically articles 2.1 to 3.2 of the Press Code, which explicitly states that the media shall:
- not allow commercial, political, personal or other non-professional considerations to influence reporting, and avoid conflict of interests as well as practices that could lead readers to doubt the media’s independence and professionalism;
- not accept any benefit which may influence coverage; and
- indicate clearly when an outside organisation has contributed to the cost of newsgathering.
In the face of some public discussion, the editor of the Sunday Times Makhudu Sefara recently on PowerFM reiterated their view that not declaring their sponsorship was an error because they forgot. Forgot? This excuse cannot hold water, nor can their collusion with other two media houses (The Citizen and BizNews) with the SAJBD. It cannot go unexplored as a compromised media can never hold any power to account like the case of the 9 South African MPs (some say there were 15 MPs) who went on a Zionist Federation supported hasbara junket during March- April 2025. This was a one-sided fact finding mission went to Israel at the height of genocide. Not surprisingly these MPs found what their sponsors wanted: the lie that there was no racism in Israel.
Dropping The Citizen
I have in consultation with a few campaigners agreed to drop the complaint in one aspect with The Citizen. The reason for this is simple, despite what their editor said in writing, we believe that they have substantially ruled out going on such trips in future.
The Citizen wrote to a campaign group affirming that: “I would like to follow it up with a full staff meeting to explain the decision as well as make sure there are no doubts. The Citizen will no longer send anyone on sponsored trips to Israel. This is because these trips, being staged-managed and carefully curated, deliberately only portray one side of the story. It is not possible to cover the other side because on these trips journalists are restricted in where they can go and who they can talk to. No professional journalistic job can be done on such trips.”
The nub of the dispute now before the Ombuds office today is mainly around the appropriate remedies which both The Citizen and The Sunday Times around the necessity of a public education. They opposed it, Why? Why are they afraid to participate in a public seminar to learn what they did wrong? There are some additional redress measures that I sought such as getting these newshouses to donate to the work of Gift of the Givers where it relates to Palestinians in under siege and living under the ongoing genocide.
Unfortunately, some media houses like the SABC, eNCA, Daily Maverick, Primedia amongst others have not helped in if not encouraging debate simply hosting a discussion about the transgression which is a corrupting influence on the media.
Earlier in this article, I quoted one press ombudsman Retief, I now want to end with the words of another, Joe Thloloe. Thloloe was appointed executive director of the Press Council of South Africa on 1 February 2013 and retired from the position in February 2018. Before that he was the Press Ombudsman in the council for five years.
In the 30th anniversary of 30th anniversary of 19 October 1977 Black Wednesday, in 2007, he famously called on journalists to live the code and commit to honest practice:
“The freedom of the press to bring an independent scrutiny to bare on all the forces that shape the society, is a freedom exercised in terms of the fundamental rights to freedom of expression. It is the media’s duty to inform the public. We are protected by the constitution. But the greatest protection one will have against anybody who wants to assail the press, is the extent in which we live this code. Therefore it should become part of our lives and part of our practice. The constitution plus the honest practice of our press code are the ones that are going to protect us in these very wild days that we are going through…”
- No Rest, No Respite A-poem byHassen Lorgat - November 16, 2025
- SANEF, Corporate Influence, and the Failure of Liberating Visions - November 13, 2025
- In Solidarity with Dr T - October 30, 2025