Approved for public release.
Date: Tuesday, 02 April 2024
Latest City Press report about Unisa is a classical example of reckless and shoddy journalism.
The University of South Africa (Unisa) rejects with contempt the article published in the City Press edition of Sunday, 31 March 2024 titled ‘UNISA ASKS FOR BLADE’S MERCY’, which alleges that the university has written a letter to the Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Dr Blade Nzimande, in which it is asking him to reconsider placing the university under administration.
The university categorically denies that it ever wrote such a letter to Minister Nzimande. Whatever documentation that the City Press claims to have seen and which they claim informed their article can therefore not be official correspondence of the university.
The university is however not surprised by this reckless and shoddy piece of journalism by the City Press reporter, Mr Abram Mashego. He has proven in his previous reporting about the university not to be interested in reporting factually and objectively and, for reasons known only to him, seems hellbent on pursuing headlines and news angles that seek to paint Unisa in a negative light.
For example, in an article published in the City Press of Sunday, 10 September 2023, he willfully and falsely reported that Unisa had lost its court bid to interdict the Minister from placing the university under administration when this was not the case. Our formal request to him and to the City Press editorial team to retract the false story fell on deaf ears.
Interestingly, in the current article of Sunday, 31 March 2024, he goes on to contradict himself and now reports that the Unisa Council ‘moved swiftly and successfully to interdict the Minister’s proposal’.
How this glaring contradiction was not picked up by the City Press editorial team is in itself mind boggling.
It is even more worrisome how an article of this nature would have passed editorial muster without the reporter producing evidence of the documentation purporting to be from the university. We reassert that he could not have produced such documentation as it does not exist. Whatever he may have produced as evidence, if at all, is definitely not from Unisa.
This is even more disturbing because the university went out of its way and requested the reporter to share with us a copy of the letter in question in order for us to confirm its authenticity, which would have been of great help to him. Needless to say, he flatly refused, even though in his previous other enquiries he voluntarily shared copies of documents in his possession.
This leaves us with no option but to conclude that the reporter, and by extension the City Press, are not interested in reporting objectively and factually about Unisa, but are on some nefarious campaign to vilify it.
Conduct of this nature is contemptible and an insult to the journalism profession in general.
/Ends.
ISSUED BY UNISA MEDIA AFFAIRS
For enquiries, please contact Senior Media Officers Tommy Huma on 072 218 6197 / 012 429 3981 / humatm@unisa.ac.za OR Edgar Rathelele on 063 731 5456 / 012 429 3981 / ratheme@unisa.ac.za
Last modified: 2024/04/03