Paper Tiger. Alide Dasnois

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СКАЧАТЬ Alide,

      We are shocked and appalled at your being fired as editor of the Cape Times.

      I am sorry that it was over my story that you were fired, but having said that, I know you would never have allowed the Cape Times not to carry the story – whoever might have written it – because we would not have been doing our jobs as journalists.

      Your being fired is dreadful for you personally, and for the Cape Times of course, but it has far bigger – and frightening – implications for press freedom in this country.

      Everyone here is rooting for you, and there is not a single staff member who does not want you back where you belong – at the helm of this newspaper, the oldest daily in South Africa.

      A comment on the cover of Gerald Shaw’s history of the Cape Times, which management gave us last week, makes a point which is pertinent today: ‘In addition to portraying the great dramas of the century, the book records with absorbing frankness the paper’s internal battles between editors, concerned to serve the public interest, and management …’

      Today the Cape Times is working on one of those ‘great dramas of the century’, the death of Nelson Mandela, while in the background our editors are desperately fighting the owners for editorial independence.

      It is a day to remember, for both those reasons, and one that I wish with all my heart will be resolved in the interests of the public good. As Shaw says, the story of the Cape Times is ‘the story of a vigorous tradition of independent journalism’. We can’t let that go.

      Janet Heard remembers that at about 9.30p.m. she got a message from chief sub-editor Glenn Bownes saying that the company had released a statement that former Cape Argus editor Gasant Abarder had been appointed editor of the Cape Times and Dasnois had been removed from her post. ‘No explanation at all.’ The next morning the Cape Times carried a brief note about Dasnois’s dismissal.

      That weekend marked what many saw as the beginning of a purge which Iqbal Survé was to undertake in order to turn the Cape Times and the other newspapers into vehicles for his own political and business interests. Yet news of his arrival on the scene, a few months earlier, had been greeted with relief by staffers fed up with the slow destruction of the newspapers under the previous owners and ready to welcome a new owner who promised to invest in journalism at last.

      3

      Profits of doom

      It was a warmish spring evening in 2006 when Independent Newspapers held its International Advisory Board (IAB) banquet at the Castle in central Cape Town. Chris Whitfield was standing at the end of an arcade, smoking a cigarette, away from the crowded tent inside the Castle walls where the thousand or so guests were milling about. A loud voice alerted him to an animated discussion taking place between two men further down the arcade.

      Sir Anthony O’Reilly, the ageing yet still imposing Irish billionaire and proprietor of Independent Media, was vigorously poking his finger at that day’s edition of the Cape Times and the tone of his voice suggested he was very angry. Opposite, framed by the arches, was Tony Howard, chief executive of the South African arm of the company. Howard, a slight man with heavy spectacles below a mop of dark hair, was taking a beating.

      Howard turned and noticed Whitfield. The CEO’s hand rose and pointed towards him. O’Reilly stuffed the newspaper into Howard’s hands and the agitated CEO strode rapidly down the corridor. ‘Sir Anthony wants to know why the Cape Times used a picture of [former Canadian Prime Minister Brian] Mulroney with the story about the IAB,’ said Howard.

      ‘And …?’ responded a puzzled Whitfield.

      ‘He is in the story and the picture should have been of him.’

      With that Howard headed off into the tent. Whitfield was bemused. For a start he was the editor of the Cape Argus at the time, not the Cape Times, and had no authority over the latter paper’s editor or staff. It seemed he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

      Two days later Whitfield was given another reminder of O’Reilly’s ego and his sentiments about the newspapers. The Cape Argus had that day published an article on the IAB and illustrated it with a small head-and-shoulders photograph of O’Reilly, drawn from the files.

      Howard phoned him late at night – Whitfield was in bed, reading – to tell him that ‘the old man is not happy about the picture’. O’Reilly had been on a diet and the picture in question showed him carrying some weight. Whitfield was told to have the photographers go through the picture library and remove all those images in which Sir Anthony might appear overweight.

      Generally, though, O’Reilly and his managers steered clear of editorial issues. The real damage inflicted by the Irish was more insidious, and often at the hands of a South African management keen to please its foreign bosses. A senior Irish executive once said to Whitfield with a laugh: ‘We ask them to jump, and they ask: How high?’

      In 1993 the Irish investors – Independent Newspapers plc (INM) – had bought what was then Argus Newspapers and its titles from Anglo American Corporation.

      They then swept into the company with a swagger that caught many of the staff by surprise, their manner being in such sharp contrast to the benign and generally hands-off approach of Anglo. First through the door was one Chris Tippler – an Australian consultant who was immediately branded as being the ‘Irish’s rottweiler’, a characterisation which he did not like. ‘Newspapers are like slot machines – get all the bits in the right place, pull the handle and the money comes pouring out,’ he once told Whitfield at a meeting in his Sandton hotel room.

      Ivan Fallon, a flamboyant man with a pronounced upper-class British accent, was appointed chief executive officer and set about carving up the company. Within months he had launched a national business supplement – Business Report. Sometime later the group’s wunderkind, Shaun Johnson, was given the task of launching a new, quality Sunday title, the Sunday Independent.

      Business Report was launched with great fanfare in Johannesburg. A light show was beamed onto neighbouring buildings from a city-centre rooftop as the country’s leading businessmen and politicians looked on. It was evident that the Irish were intent on burying ‘Aunty Argus’ – the old grey company of Anglo American.

      The Sunday Independent was launched on 26 June 1995. The lead story was South Africa’s Rugby World Cup win of the previous day. The company now had thirteen titles in five cities: The Star, the Saturday Star, the Sunday Independent and Business Report in Johannesburg; the Pretoria News in Pretoria; The Mercury, the Daily News, The Post and the Sunday Tribune in Durban; the Cape Times, the Cape Argus and Weekend Argus in Cape Town as well as a suite of free community newspapers; and the Diamond Fields Advertiser in Kimberley. Later, the tabloid Daily Voice in Cape Town and the very successful Isolezwe and Isolezwe ngeSonto in Durban were to be added to the collection.

      For Johnson, Whitfield and the others involved in the new projects, it was a time of great excitement, but there were indications of less savoury things to come: the managers of the new company – now named Independent News and Media South Africa (INMSA) – were evidently going to keep a very close eye on the bottom line.

      After the honeymoon period the owners took a sharp knife to the company’s costs. In July 1994 the Argus Africa News Service was closed after 38 years of covering the continent. The Irish management said ‘new arrangements’ would be made to cover the rest of Africa, but little ever materialised. In September 1994 the Pretoria News was turned from an afternoon paper to a morning edition СКАЧАТЬ