Russell Brand was not denied entry to South Africa or banned from the country, Huffington Post

Credit: Huffington Post

Russell Brand was not allowed to board a flight from London to Johannesburg to perform as part of his stand up world tour "Messiah Complex" on Friday because of what has been described as "not having enough blank pages on his passport".

Because of a mixture of ignorance and false information that has been disseminated by, among others, Brand himself, The Huffington Post somehow managed to surmise he had flown to South Africa, landed and is now banned from entering the country.  All three are incorrect.  He never left London.

Maybe the Huffington Post should stick to rehashing other publications' stories or as they call it "aggregating".

The Daily Mail Ramaphosa picture fail

Maybe I'm being petty and should really focus on the disturbing story that's being reported instead of being childish by pointing out the newspaper's mistake, but this is really sloppy.

Somebody at The Daily Mail seems to have just lifted a youthful photo the late Steve Tshwete and used it to portray the rich Deputy President of the ANC, Cyril Ramaphosa.

This is the photo they should have used.

You're welcome.

Worst job in SA media: running @timeslive twitter account

Pic: @Sipho_Stuurman

If you think you've had a tough day, spare a thought  for the poor soul who mans (or womans, it's the 21st century) who runs the Twitter account of The Times.

I used to think that the journalists who "pound the road" to go and collect us the stories, package them and

Reuters ANC Afriforum agreement headline fail

The ANC and the white special interest group, Afriforum reached an agreement on Wednesday that effectively ended their court battle and culminated in the ANC pledging to stop their supporters singing the song which led to the court case in the first place.

Quite how they intend to achieve that is not yet clear but if you read the story on the Reuters website like I did you'd have come away with the impression that the agreement was between the ANC and all white inhabitants of South Africa.  In fact, the word "Afriforum" does not feature in the story until the second paragraph and we all know that on the internet people only read the headline, look at the pictures and head straight to the comments section to let the world know what they think about the story they have not read.

This is a huge fail and I'm surprised that three full days after the day it was published they have not edited the headline.

News24 Voices editing fail

One of News24's opinion sections that has a lot of good writers and equally impressive number of clicks is News24Voices.  One of their good writers, and I think they're luck to have her, is Mandy Roussouw and as brilliant as I think she is, even she needs to be edited.

I'm afraid I'll never know why she finds the suggestion that the DA and Great Britain clandestinely plotting to depose the ANC government laughable because the piece is so badly written/edited I couldn't read past the first paragraph.

YFM #JubJubPrisonSongs fail

Source: news24.com

UPDATE: 16/10/2012 17:07

Yfm has since deleted the tweet presumably owing to the weight of twitter criticism.  How very brave?

Barely a few minutes after the Jub Jub verdict handed down, Yfm took to twitter to urge their listeners to suggest songs to be dedicated to him.

See, Yfm is really edgy and rebellious, not even the murder of four kids can escape their satirical lens.  The are really anti-establishment and whoever said South Africans are too polite has never had the privilege to listen to this esteemed station.

Was Unathi dismissed or suspended, City Press?

City Press either don't think that the people who read the Entertainment section of their website can distinguish between the words "dismissed" and "suspended" or they just don't care.  According to my dictionary:

Dismiss -

1. Order or allow to leave; send away
2. Discharge from employment or office.

Suspend -

1. Temporarily prevent from continuing or being in force or effect

Why would they have a headline "Unathi dismissed" - which implies that she has been discharged from her duties - and go on to say she has been suspended later on in the same article?  It maybe the work of the subs to make sure the headline and the sub headline are in agreement, but a quick search in their website reveals that the journalist has a history of non stories so it may be par for the course.

Maybe I'm just being a prude and the target market doesn't mind being mislead but in the increasingly squeezed newspaper market that's infested with free writers and where celebrities break their own stories, you'd think paid writers would do better than this.

The Star and Zuma penis drawing

twitter.com/faranaaz

When Jacob Zuma decided to take a break from impersonating a president and talk about a subject that's very close to his heart, sex, to a group of unfortunate school kids yesterday, nobody could have forseen the hilarity that was to grace front page of The Star today.

The nice boys and girls at The Star thought they'll let this picture adorn the their front page and accompany their leading story, which may have been a commentary to this painting.  It's not really a fail if they chose this picture deliberately but if it was an oversight, then it's a huge own goal.  It's chucklesome to the rest of us.

People will speculate as to Mr Zumas's suitability to dish out sex advice given his track record.  All I know is should the youth choose to take it, shower manufacturers will suddenly find themselves having a lot of demand for their products.

T-bo Touch, tripe and the building

Pic: thenewage.co.za

Online racist hatemongers took time off their ANC hating afternoons yesterday to join in the mocking of a story that was off the Sunday Sun about American wannabe T-bo Touch was fined $75 for cooking tripe and stinking up a block of flat in New York City.  Presumably he's there to top up his dodgy American accent that, as you can hear in the clip below, is all over the place.




The elephant in the room, of course, is nobody seems to be asking how the newspaper found out about his misfortune.  None of the websites that followed up seem to have enquired either;  they were just too happy to harvest the clicks they got as a result of copying and pasting the Sunday Sun story.  It's not as if the NYC police are going to call a tabloid in South Africa and tell them that some guy is cooking something that smells very bad so one can only surmise that either he or someone in his camp called the newspaper, in which case it's not really news.

You can't fine me for being Proudly South African I think I should bringmy attorney overs!!! It's not about R650 it's about Patriotism
— Touch (@iamtbotouch) October 8, 2012

But as your boy puts it, it's all about patriotism.  The accent may elude him but he seems to have taken to their jingoism like a duck to water.

Here's a promo idea for his abysmal radio show: "your boy's in the building, and the odour preceds him."

Khaya Mthethwa against booing Melissa

Black South Africans risked bankruptcy by running huge phone bills voting for Khaya Mthethwa and made him the first black winner of Idols SA.  During the final results episodes he and fellow finalist Melissa Allison perfomed and Allison was booed, presumably by Khaya's fans.

News24 must have assumed that Khaya either put them up to it or he approved of the booing, judging by this story.  Yes.  They thought it warranted not a line in his overall feel good story but it's own story that he's not okay Who would have thunk it, a nice Christian boy Khaya does not approve of people booing his competitors?  I think it would have been a story if he had said he was all for it.

Here's a lead for a story news24, ask the leaders of the G8 nations where they stand on poverty.  I hear they have very left field views on the subject.

Justin Harrison vs Woolworths media fail

South Africa is a country that's obsessed with race.  So if I were a shady "internet entrepreneur" the nature of whose services are not exactly clear a full 10 minutes after reading my website but claims to be an expert who wants to be paid for them anyway , who doesn't feature in first four pages of the google search results of his own name, is gaming his social networking credentials and has to resort badgering local technologically ignorant brands for freebies, I'd jump at an opportunity to stir up a racial tensions in an effort to raise my profile and drive traffic to my website.  That's what Justin Harrison has done.

It looks like he spent the whole weekend pestering white people into boycotting Woolworths for what he considers to be a racist employment policy.  It looks like it finally paid off as word hit the galvanised masses on twitter on Tuesday.  And the "news" gave it legs soon afterwards (Hey news people, what happens twitter is not news.)  As expected Woolworths unleashed their PR machince to the situation and Mr Harrison was roundly mocked on twitter as neatly distilled in this piece (Hey Verashni, it's the 21st century, you can embed tweets to blogs now).

It's no coincidence that he doesn't want to do any interviews.  Why would he?  He got what he wanted: traffic to his crappy website (Hey Justin, I don't know what you're selling but if you're going to get people to part with money for it, you'll do well to hire a writer and an SEO practitioner.  They're very cheap in Kolkata, ask the people who sold you twitter followers, they should know).

Well done media, you've given a delusional nutcase attention and the traffic he so craved and he's now laughing all the way to the top of the top of the google search results.  And for what, so you could sell a few newspapers and airtime spots?  What are you going to do tomorrow?

Media Pass: Greg Marinovich

Source: dailymaverick.co.za

Following the gunning of 34 miners at the hands of the SAPS at Marikana mine a few weeks ago, you'd have been forgiver for thinking that a memo was issued urging all reporters to only dissect and analyse the shooting that was captured in the video that has shocked the world.

As you can see there were no more than a dozen miners in that video.  You'd have expected journalists to find out how the others were killed.  Instead, we got reactions from Politicians and pundits.  That was until Friday when Greg Marinovich's prolific piece journalism was published in The Daily Maverick website.  In it he details his two week investigation, re-traced the steps the police would have taken on that fateful afternoon and interviewed witnesses.

He concludes that a lot of those shot we murdered by the police in cold blood.  Of course an enquiry in is underway but if I were a betting man, I'd say nobody will be held to account.  It will be concluded that the Police shot the miners because they were defending themselves and lessons will be learned and let's move on please.

I digress.  It was very brave of The Daily Maverick to be the lone dissenting voice and publish his piece when it would have been easier to hide behind the safety in numbers.  I'm also encouraged to learn that their paid version iMaverick is doing well, which is no mean feat in the South African digital space.  This can only mean they are not going away anytime soon.

And that's just as well.