Dear Messrs Hein Brand, Managing Director, and Francois Groepe, Chief Executive, Publishing,
I have for the past three or four years debated whether to write this open letter to you, regarding one of your prime publications and title, ‘The City Press'. You may of course ask why are we not taking the City Press to the Press Ombuds, but this matter is so serious that it goes beyond what is in any case, at least in my experience, a relatively toothless institution.
Again you may argue that as owners and management you would not like to be drawn into matters belonging to the editorial team of the paper, since, as we are often told, all media operate on the basis of editorial ‘independence'.
The main reason I write to you is that, rightly or wrongly, I believe that the matters I want to raise here have a huge bearing on the credibility of not only the City Press, but our media as a whole, threatening to erode the many gains made in media freedom and towards strengthening our democracy. In any case, from my experience, the distance between owners and editors are not as distant as is sometimes claimed.
The main point I wish to make in this letter to you is that the editorial team of the City Press has deliberately pursued editorial stances and general news coverage on many serious matters relating to the ANC and its allies in a provocatively factionalist, divisive, and highly subjective manner. As far as I am concerned The City Press has ceased to be a newspaper, but has become a lobby group inside our structures!
In other words the City Press has, at least over the last four to five years, and increasingly and especially so in the run up to the ANC's Polokwane Conference, displayed a very clear preference on the outcomes of the major Congresses and events of our movement, including who is elected onto leadership structures.