Friday, January 16, 2015

IOL.co.za Independent Media Agenda

I have been online for a very long time. I remember when the website IOL.co.za first came to be and I watched its growth over the years. However, things have changed in recent years.  This all happened when the Sekunjalo (a heavily ANC connected company) bought out Independent Media.

Over time IOL.CO.ZA has become a political mouth piece for the ruling African National Congress. For my American readers you can liken the ownership of IOL.CO.ZA and its relationship to the ANC in the same way that Rupert Murdoch and the Republican Party in the USA are connected.

There have been multiple incidents where very obvious ANC influence has shown itself. Independent journalists like Tony Weaver got fired from the Cape Times (a media publication in the Independent Media stable) for not bowing down to ANC pressure. Recently a respected journalist by Max Du Preez quit because of the strong political influence. He could no longer suffer the attacks of journalist ethics in silence. 

People high up in Independent Media are well known to go grovel for forgiveness if Zuma is upset at an article rather than maintaining any type of integrity. IOL.co.za is also well known for publishing articles supportive if the dictator Robert Mugabe. Basically in a nutshell, IOL.co.za have become a cesspool of propaganda and bad news. 

However the reason for me writing about IOL.co.za was not to inform you about their terrible propaganda but to you inform you about a current and insidious propaganda tactic currently underway at IOL.co.za

The corrupt ANC can not handle that the Democratic Alliance (DA) runs the Western Cape. The DA is a pretty honest political party that has not been corrupted like the ANC has. They run the Western Cape well and the Western Cape is often known as the best run province in South Africa. However, the DA has lots of white people in it, so the ANC are trying their best to portray the DA as a racist white party that wants to being back Apartheid. In almost every reference to the DA or anything the DA is involved in... they will try portray as racist. Zumas ANC are so racist, they try make it out that all white people are racist.

So right now the current campaign by IOL is to try portray the city of Cape Town as a racist city. Racism happens everywhere. Some black people are racist and some white people are racist. Cape Town is actually a very liberal and multicultural city where most people get along. If you read IOL.co.za you would never get that impression though. Almost weekly they run a story about a racist in Cape Town. Sometimes they`ll even go back a year or more to try dig up an old story where something racist happened. They are very specific in their coverage of the racism. The racist story can only involve a white person being racist to a black person. It will never cover black racism. It hardly every covers racism from anywhere else in the country. It almost completely focuses on racism in Cape Town.

Why is IOL doing this? They are trying to create that false perception that a DA governed city is a racist city. In the last 3 months there have been a large amount of "white on black" racism only involving Cape Town. If you search "Cape Town" on IOL this is what you get:

Please note, these articles are the latest articles from the last several months. I only copied about 20% of them. There are many many more on the actual website, but this will give you an idea at their theme

Black in Cape Town? Brace yourself

Please note, I am not defending any of the deplorable racist incidents that happened above. The above articles generally represent peoples opinions, suspect studies and a handful of actual incidents where there was racism. Racism is everywhere, but if you read IOL you would think it just happens in Cape Town.

The IOL agenda is pretty clear. They have lost all credibility.  They have become has become a puppet mouthpiece to Zuma's corrupt ANC.

Its a sad day in South Africa, when the ANC acts more like the Apartheid government every year. T

IOL have become as useful to South Africans as Steve Hofmeyr. Independent media are in my opinion, a cancer to journalism and journalist ethics. South Africans need to be careful. ANC corruption is spreading to the media as well.