However, in the case of Minister Tshabalala-Msimang, the information revealed by the Sunday Times directly reflects a) on her competency as a minister b) on her moral fitness for public office c) her lack of respect for the general public – why should she receive any preferential treatment at all in the public health service which she so badly mismanages with such tragic consequences. Just yesterday morning, I drove a friend to Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town to be admitted for an operation. The hospital’s environs are shabby and rundown, parking next to impossible. It is a completely unwelcoming environment for patients even before one begins to consider standards of patient care (which are generally far better here in the Western Cape than elsewhere in the country). The government’s underspending on, and neglect of health, and the rights of ordinary people to the best possible medical care, is a disgrace to the spirit of democracy, human rights, and the Freedom Charter – and yet you consider T-M’s abuse of privilege to be worthy of protection in the guise of “privacy”?

In the circumstances, and once they had received the information, it would have been immoral for the editors of the Sunday Times NOT to have published this information.

On a separate point, Essop Pahad is a scary apparatchik whose style directly reflects the president’s penchant for control, control, control, control. Yet, as a journalist myself, I cannot but agree that the media’s corrections and acknowledgements of error are frequently defensive, mean and begrudging and usually come nowhere close to undoing the possible damage of the original error. This problem has been compounded in the age of the internet because news articles are frequently blogged or circulated by email – yet correction rarely draw the same attention.

All papers should create websites dedicated to correction of errors that provide a one-stop view for their readers of past errors, standing catalogs not of their incompetence but of their dedication to the facts.

More *stealth* regulation than self regulation…

In this light, Essop Pahad is saying two things: 1. Broadly speaking, you have press freedom; 2. within this, you had better self-regulate better, or …

The stakes in this are quite serious. I’ll write about in on Thursday in my M&G column: http://www.mg.co.za/converse

Guy, the way that you structure this article implies that you think that Pahad/The ANC sees “self regulation” as the iron fist in the velvet glove. Is this true?

And should a party who can declare BEFORE an election that they will win really be worried about what the press has to say? Clearly they are of no real interest to the electorate, so by that logic, why highlight the problem?

In Manto’s case, it’s different. The decisions she makes, the policies she implements, and the things she says are costing people their lives, so is it any wonder she gets lambasted like she does? Between her and Nkosazana Zuma, they’ve done more damage to our health care sector in the past 10 years than I would have believe possible. And these people are still heads of state?!

Essop Pahad needs to get over himself and realise that if his cronies behave themselves and actually do the jobs they were being paid to do, there wouldn’t be so much finger pointing and blamestorming in the press. Yes the ANC is guaranteed to be the government in the next election. So what? What does that have to do with anything? If they behave like irresponsible kids, they’re going to get treated like irresponsible kids. Until they start gagging the press, that is.

What Pahad forgets is the existence of the law of defamation. It functions as a very real check on media freedom — which is as it should be. The question is whether there can be any legal limit on media freedom other than defamation. I would have thought not.