The department of communications has asked Times Media Group’s public editor to look into alleged unethical conduct by Sunday Times editor Phylicia Oppelt.
The editor should also look into Oppelt’s “personal attack” on communications minister Dina Pule, her spokesman, Wisani Ngobeni, City Press editor Ferial Haffajee and her deputy, Adriaan Basson, the department said in a statement.
“The Press Council must also show it has the capacity to intervene to stop the slide towards rogue journalism,” it said. “The Sunday Times appears hell-bent to manipulate information to serve the narrow interests of the Democratic Alliance.”
The department was reacting to an opinion piece by Oppelt on Sunday titled “Unethical conduct? Look at the facts”, in which she addressed accusations about the newspaper’s behaviour.
“There is a mob of the self-righteous, led by a former Sunday Times employee, a government minister and a rival newspaper, who are the self-anointed moral guardians of the ethics and conduct of this 107-year-old publication,” Oppelt wrote.
“Engaging my accusers in this newspaper, of which I am editor — and explaining myself to our 3,4m readers — seems the right thing to do.”
In the article, Oppelt wrote that members of parliament’s ethics committee approached the Sunday Times for information about stories it had published about Pule and her relationship with businessman Phosane Mngqibisa.
She said committee members — from the ANC, the DA and the Inkatha Freedom Party — had approached the newspaper’s journalists for information, which they had shared with the permission of their sources. “We co-operated with the ethics committee, not a political party,” said Oppelt.
She reportedly gave the DA documents to hand to the ethics committee, which is conducting an inquiry into Pule.
Oppelt told City Press she had felt obliged to do so because the Sunday Times was concerned the committee “might reach a finding based on partial or incomplete evidence”.
In her article on Sunday, Oppelt said the Sunday Times was not the first newspaper to co-operate with a government institution, and she asked whether other editors had been asked if they had done the same.
She questioned the “impartiality” of City Press’s editors in the way in which they had presented Pule’s side of the story and had turned the Sunday Times “into the focus of their coverage”.
“Can editor Ferial Haffajee and her deputy, Adriaan Basson, truthfully say that they have never co-operated with a government institution or inquiry?” Oppelt asked.
On Sunday, the communications department described Oppelt’s article as “appalling and offensive”, and said it was “grounded in both disrespect and arrogance”.
Earlier this week, the department said it had been told by the Press Council that it could not investigate a complaint of unethical conduct by Sunday Times reporters because it had “no powers” to do so.
Ngobeni said he had written to the council asking it to investigate the conduct of Oppelt.
In April, Pule held a media conference at which she alleged that the Sunday Times was staging a smear and blackmail campaign against her. — Sapa
