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Today the panel led by retired judge Kathleen Satchwell released the report of the commission of inquiry into ethical challenges facing South African journalism and officially handed it over to the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF).
The report by Satchwell and fellow panel members – veteran journalist and author Rich Mkhondo and award-winning journalist and former Fulbright Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow Nikiwe Bikitsha was commissioned by SANEF in June 2019.
The Inquiry was proactively set up following the events surrounding the publication and subsequent retraction of a series of stories by the Sunday Times between 2011 and 2016, and public debates about reporting and processes followed in newsrooms across the country. The terms of reference of the inquiry were to look at possibilities of ethical lapses within the industry and to find solutions to enhance quality, ethical journalism.
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The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) deeply mourns the deaths of four journalists who died in the past week from Covid-19 complications.
SANEF has learnt with great sadness of the passing of Sunday Independent news editor and investigative journalist Solly Maphumulo; Former Cape Argus photographer Enver Essop; resource coordinator in the SABC newsroom in KZN, Ismail Jinnah, and senior political journalist Knowledge Simelane of Ilanga Newspaper in KwaZulu-Natal.
Solly Maphumulo
Sunday Independent news editor Maphumulo died on Tuesday from Covid-19 related complications.
Zingisa Mkhuma, Sunday Independent editor, said Solly’s death was a tragic loss both for her family and the journalism fraternity. “I called her soldier because of her ability to investigate and get to the bottom of things.”
The South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) is deeply concerned about the high level of misinformation, fake news and disinformation relating to Covid-19 and to vaccination. We wish to caution against the spread of news intentionally misleading the public which has become an increasing problem for the functioning of our democracies, affecting individuals’ understanding of reality.
The South African National Editors’ Forum calls on the leadership of the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) to step in and discipline its Director of Information and Publicity, Tafadzwa Tuboy Mugwadi, who is assaulting media freedom and freedom of expression daily on social media.
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The South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) has learnt with great sadness of the untimely death of journalist, writer, editor and founder of the online publication Indian Spice, Naufal Khan (39). He died on Monday after a long illness.
Khan plied his craft at the Sunday Times, Thomson’s Travel and Independent Newspapers, always nurturing the dream of a relevant publication that spoke to the Indian community in South Africa, in all its diversity.
He has been described as a person who served the truth with unflinching courage and called out injustice wheresoever he found it. He dedicated the last four years to Indian Spice, growing it into a large online platform that consistently broke big stories, which gave the Indian community the blend of news that they wanted, and was itself the topic of many mealtime conversations.