I believe in freedom of expression. Our Constitution protects the right to freedom of expression. That is why I cannot welcome the Equality Court's ruling that Malema was guilty of hate speech when he commented on the young woman who had accused Pres...
Some journalists believe that President Jacob Zuma's inauguration speech signalled a thaw in his relationship with the media. But actions speak louder than words: look who he appointed as his communications minister.
Of all the surprising cabinet ...
I am getting just a little bit irritated by food retailers who shed crocodile tears over the difficulties of their cash-strapped customers, while raking in ever-increasing profits.
Take, for example, Spar, which reported first-half financial resul...
Can someone explain to me why South Africa needs 31 Cabinet ministers? According to The Times, Jacob Zuma is planning to enlarge the Cabinet from 28 to 31, plus 19 deputy ministers. That would make South Africa’s Cabinet, as far as I could ascertai...
The Rocky Mountain News, Cincinnati Post and New York Sun are gone. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its last edition on Tuesday. The San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer and Minneapolis Star-Tribune are in their death throes. Even ...
I can’t help feeling sorry for Carl Niehaus. Not that anything can excuse the man’s behaviour, but you have to understand where he's coming from. Niehaus spent his early adulthood in jail for his anti-apartheid convictions while the rest of us we...
Why do we keep paying more for food at supermarkets even as the petrol price and producer prices fall? Business Day’s explanation in an editorial this week is far from convincing. It starts off praising Woolworths for cutting the price of 245 “se...
The easiest way to make a small fortune from newspapers, a wise man once said, is to start with a large fortune. The ANC would do well to keep this advice in mind as it considers a proposal to acquire its own newspaper.
Despite the sensational hea...
What is it about journalists and numbers? Mathematical incompetence among journalists is, as the American media scholar Steve Maier once put it, ‘legendary”. Actually, Maier was wrong. Far from being legendary, the numerical cluelessness of journ...
By Robert Brand and Anne Taylor
We’ve had to put up with David Bullard for years, so it was with delight that we heard he’d been fired. But it seems there are those who are rallying to his defence, citing Machiavellian corporate and political ...
Robert Brand teaches media law, ethics and economics journalism at Rhodes University. Before joining academia, he worked as a journalist for the Pretoria News, the Star and Bloomberg News.
