Independent Media’s report on decuplets story: it was a hoax; apology is needed
In its haste to publish journalist Piet Rampedi’s June 2021 story about a Tembisa mother giving birth to decuplets as a world first, “Independent Media’s reputation was put at risk and the trust factor in media has been seriously compromised”.
can reveal that this was the finding of the media group’s own internal regulator in a report dated 5 July 2021.
Independent Media’s Group Ombud also recommended that: “The Pretoria News, IOL and the other titles in the group that had picked up the syndicated story of the decuplets publish a full apology to all readers.”
This is in stark contrast to the feedback provided to the public by Independent Media owner Iqbal Survé this week. Survé insisted that the mother at the centre of the story, Gosiame Sithole, had indeed been pregnant with 10 babies.
He alleged that eight were born alive and had since disappeared, caught up in what he claimed was a baby trafficking syndicate operating “daily” out of Gauteng hospitals. The four panel members who considered the matter on behalf of Independent’s Group Ombud came to very different conclusions.
Moegsien Williams, Zama Mkhize, Yogi Devan and Verlie Oosthuizen were tasked with assessing complaints laid about the story by veteran journalist Zubeida Jaffer, former Independent group editor Ryland Fisher and Dr Alex de la Rouviere in June 2021.
In her complaint, Jaffer, supported by Fisher, said that “as a subscriber to the Cape Times she had expected an apology to be published about the ... decuplets story”. As a professional journalist, Jaffer said she was concerned that the matter had “damaged the reputation of Independent News Media and the profession of journalism”.
The findings of the four panellists were unanimously scathing. Panel member Moegsien Williams, another former Independent editor, questioned: “Why would a ‘feel-good story’ of about 20 paragraphs contain 13 references to appeals for donations in cash and kind, as well as two graphics containing bank account numbers of Sithole and [the decuplets’ alleged father] Tsoetsi...?”
Panel member Zama Mkhize termed an apology for the story subsequently sent by Rampedi to his colleagues as “not satisfactory, very flimsy and does not seem to comprehend the extent of the damage caused”.
Fellow panellist Yogin Devan dismissed Rampedi’s claims that his failure to carry out a fuller investigation was because he did not want to invade the mother’s privacy.
“The mother posed happily for a photograph with a bulging belly,” Devan wrote. “Would her privacy have been invaded if she was photographed with her 10 babies?”
Panellist Verlie Oosthuizen shared Williams’s concerns about the focus on donations to the decuplets family, writing: “It is difficult to avoid the inference that this story was concocted for nefarious purposes.”
The conclusion to the Group Ombud’s report states that the entire decuplets saga “has brought [Rampedi], a 123-year-old title, the entire Independent group and South African journalism in general into disrepute”.
The report also concludes that a “clear, prominent and unequivocal apology to readers” be printed by the Independent group and IOL, together with “a full explanation of how and why the hoax was published” and “a published accounting of exactly what happened to the donations...”
From this week’s press conference, however, it appears that Survé intends to disregard every word of the 23-page report produced by his own ombud’s office.
DM168 has seen a copy of the report and independently confirmed its veracity.