Zille guns for Cape Times for ignoring ruling
Western Cape Premier Helen Zille may take legal action against the Cape Times for violating a Press Council ruling after it failed to publish an apology for a “scathing” article about her.
Zille said yesterday the Press Council of Appeals Panel had ruled the newspaper had to make amends for reporting she had hired a spy to keep tabs on some members of her executive and members of the African National Congress in the province.
“Having repeatedly violated the press code, the Cape Times are now in violation of the Press Appeals Panel ruling against them. This is a newspaper that has been misleading their readers for eight months with false and malicious reporting,” Zille said.
Her office was taking legal advice on steps that could be taken against the newspaper.
The appeals panel, headed by Judge Bernard Ngoepe, found the Cape Times had violated the Press Code by using a single anonymous source, with no evidence to back up their malicious claims, Zille’s spokesperson Michael Mpofu said. The panel also found the provincial cabinet had, in truth, received a once-off “debugging” service in 2010, which was the “very antithesis of spying”.
Judge Ngoepe’s “scathing ruling” ordered the Cape Times to apologise to Zille on its front page and publish her right of reply in the same edition. Mpofu said the newspaper was given 14 days to issue an apology – and yesterday was the last day to comply.
Zille’s office would inform the Press Appeals Panel of the Cape Times’s violation, and request it be addressed.
“When the Cape Times lost the [former editor] Alide Dasnois’s dismissal case, they ran a story the following day giving the false impression they had won. This latest violation is just another example of their total disrespect for the Press Code, and their readers,” said Zille.
The newspaper had not responded to questions by the time of going to print.