Independent Media’s editor-in-chief, Aneez Salie has sent a letter to the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) demanding an apology for their highly defamatory statement relating to the ’Baby Trade’ docuseries.
The letter reads...
We write to you, in no uncertain terms, to raise our concerns over the South African National Editors Forum’s (SANEF) statement to INMA regarding Independent Media’s Baby Trade docuseries being nominated as a finalist. Your actions are unfortunate, deeply disturbing, and wholly defamatory.
Following INMA’s announcement of Baby Trade as a finalist in the category: Best Use of social media, you (SANEF) wrote to INMA attempting to have the submission removed as a finalist and its entry disqualified. The reasons your provided, not only demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of the serious matters raised in the Baby Trade docuseries but bring your organisation’s credentials as a media representative body into disrepute.
A key point you seem to have missed, is that the entry that was submitted is separate from the article to which you refer. In conflating them you have deliberately sought to create confusion and sow doubt.
In your partisan desperation therefore, to attack anything emanating from the Independent Media stable, SANEF has missed the vital opportunity to engage with the actual content contained in the docuseries, which raises several serious issues that the South African government should be held to account for and work towards preventing, such as human trafficking and the preying on vulnerable women.
This point has been completely ignored by SANEF’s pontificating that simply put, adopts the attitude of, if; ‘Government says it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen.’ Since when do media organisations simply take the government's word for it?
If members of SANEF had indeed watched the Baby Trade series, then they would have seen how the series seeks to unpack the story from its inception, and by hearing directly from the characters involved, so audiences can make up their minds for themselves - the fundamentals of any docuseries and good journalism.
The fact that SANEF has once again adopted an ‘attack the messenger’ approach, only highlights your members’ own failures as media organisations, to investigate the matter objectively, instead of dismissing it just because it comes from a rival media house.
It also boggles the mind as to how SANEF can pass judgement on a story that has not been probed, parties directly affected have not been spoken to, nor has the content that has been presented, been dispassionately assessed and interrogated.
If you and your members had done so, then you would have deciphered the following amongst other things that :
• Gosiame Sithole was pregnant
• Gosiame Sithole’s triplets with a previous partner are missing
• Gosiame Sithole has had other multiple births
• The Department of Social Development illegally incarcerated her in a psychiatric facility where she was detained for a considerable amount of time
• Independent experts have corroborated evidence of private investigators and investigative journalists about a baby trafficking syndicate operating out of Gauteng hospitals
• Gosiame Sithole named and identified the Doctor that facilitated the delivery of her babies and had provided her with pre- and post-natal care
• Cellular phone data corroborates Gosiame Sithole’s version of events.
Further, despite government issuing public threats to institute legal proceedings against Independent Media, none have been forthcoming. Your statement, thus, to INMA is entirely misleading. For the record, we have no concerns in tackling any legal action since the corroborating evidence as portrayed in the series is overwhelming.
If SANEF, who do not fully represent all the media in the country, were not so obsessed with fighting Independent Media and took the time to consider some of the above facts, then journalistically, they would be compelled to investigate Sithole’s story, and come to the same conclusions as have been presented through the docuseries.
But this is not about journalism for SANEF, it never has been.
Apart from the above, SANEF is completely out of line in writing to INMA and accusing Independent Media of setting back advances made in protecting women and children in South Africa, when it is the exact opposite.
If anything, it is SANEF who should be embarrassed that none of their members have chosen to tell the story of a vulnerable South African woman, whose claims and treatment at the hand of Government officials and the medical sector, has been at the very least, a trampling of her dignity. Her story should not be overlooked.
It is worth noting that since providing Gosiame Sithole with a platform to tell her story, Independent Media has received a multitude of messages, emails and calls from other South African women who have faced a similar ordeal. This tells us we are barking up the right tree, not pandering to government denials like you and your members. In exposing the rot, a worldwide phenomenon, we believe we are in fact contributing to the protection of women and children, because forewarned is forearmed.
Independent Media’s view remains that when looked at objectively, Gosiame Sithole’s story is a compelling and fascinating one that warrants exposure.
If SANEF has evidence to the contrary of the content contained in the Baby Trade docuseries, then we suggest it provides it promptly.
To that end, we demand that SANEF retract their statement from INMA, apologise to the body and to Independent Media. This to be done by close of business today - 7 April 2022
We reserve our rights
Regards
Aneez Salie
*Aneez Salie is Independent Media’s editor-in-chief