Verashni Pillay is one of the brightest stars of her generation; gifted and passionate on the cutting edge of journalism’s transformation from print to digital.
Pillay parleyed her tenure at the Mail and Guardian into becoming the inaugural South African editor of Huffington Post, a news and opinion website.
She published a poorly constructed and controversial contribution purporting to be from “Shelley Garland,” a female postgraduate student, bemoaning the continued privileged status in society of white males - when the writer was himself a white male writing the article purely to illustrate a suspected publishing bias at the website and thereby slip the customary editorial checks and balances.
When the ruse was discovered, Pillay referred the matter to the Press Ombud. The ombud in what will become a hotly-debated ruling found the “Shelley Garland” article to be hate speech. Pillay promptly resigned.
There are those who believe she was guilty of publishing without checking her facts.
This is not strictly true, she published an opinion piece from a contributor that was provocative, much like newspaper editors do every day with columnists and letter writers.
Whatever she was guilty of, she has grabbed the moral high ground by opting to bear the full brunt of the consequences, in the finest traditions of editing, sadly little seen today.
The digital revolution has turned journalism on its head, democratising consumption, giving the power to the reader ramping up the pressure on journalists and editors to be first to publish, almost around the clock, and to drive content towards audiences needs, often at the cost of fact checking and abrogating the editor’s role of guiding and shaping debate.
In an era of fake news and now fake views the need to check and even more so to reflect before publishing is greater than ever before.
There is not an editor in this country who did not wince in sympathy when Pillay’s mistake was revealed.
There will be very few who did not doff their caps when she fell on her sword. We hope Pillay will edit again.