Ray Joseph and GroundUp’s unethical pursuits and the journalism of suppositions

This is a piece I hoped not to write. It’s terrible having to tell people acting unethically what they already know. It is what AmaZulu would call umsangano — madness.

Let’s start at the beginning. Ray Joseph, a reporter connected to GroundUp, wrote a story on Sunday World receiving adverts in return for puff pieces as news when I was its editor. And I decided it was such a wishy-washy story it was not worth a response.

Then Anton Harber commented on it but did not say a word about the many things wrong about the story.

Then the DA released a statement and later used the same story to make outrageous claims not borne out by facts.

I then thought perhaps my silence had, to some, meant that there must be some smidgen of truth about egregious though unsupported claims made by Joseph.

I will start with a historical account and later provide a synthesis of the issues at play and the players involved.

Ray’s attack on a junior reporter

Back in 2019 when I was editor of Sunday World, the title’s deputy editor Amos Mananyetso came to my office to say one of the junior reporters, Boitumelo Kgobotlo, had just been verbally abused by Joseph when she contacted him for a story minutes earlier. Joseph used raw, unprintable language against Kgobotlo to stop her from writing a story based on a public statement made by the National Lotteries Commission (NLC). 

Mananyetso asked me if they should expose Joseph for the vulgar person he was. I said the Press Council’s code of ethics was our guide. If we could defend it at the Press Ombudsman, let’s publish it. Mananyetso, being less dramatic than I, decided not to expose Joseph, whose unprintable words were indeed shocking but sort of expected.

The same year, the Mail & Guardian had published a story in which Joseph was exposed for threatening friends of his daughter, including Dinesh Balliah, now head of Wits Journalism, after his daughter, Roxanne Joseph, was bust for falsely claiming she had cancer for nine months. 

The M&G piece states Ray Joseph “accuses Balliah of making defamatory allegations, and of unethical and unprofessional behaviour. And then come the threats. ‘And if I ever hear that you have badmouthed her (Roxanne) again (and I am well-connected, as you are aware, so it will come back to me) I will make sure you regret it — just as Roxanne will regret what she has done for the rest of her life’.”

Joseph wasn’t done. He also threatened Nomatter Ndebele, who shared a tweet that exposed Joseph’s daughter and sought to stop her from addressing the African Investigative Journalism Conference hosted by Harber, at the time head of Wits Journalism.

Joseph said: “You must live with the consequences of what might happen. I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

Ndebele eventually deleted the tweet, but not before Harber conceded that including Roxanne Joseph as an authority to speak on journalism at his conference was “a mistake and a misjudgement” he later corrected.

Other threats Joseph makes could be found here.

Making accusations of unethical conduct against others when it is him behaving unethically appears Joseph’s modus operandi. He claims I have behaved unethically when Sunday World received adverts in return for publishing what he calls puff stories on my watch — a claim I reject outright. What is significant is that he makes this claim while he and Nathan Geffen, editor of GroundUp, are privately pursuing reinstatement of GroundUp on TimesLIVE. It’s a naked, unethical pursuit of self-interest. I will revert to this shortly.

No sooner had Mananyetso left than Joseph called, ostensibly to get me to stop Kgobotlo from writing her story. I decided not to answer. My view was he should not be allowed to verbally abuse a junior reporter and then abuse his connections in journalism to kill off a story. I loathed the baaskap [boss-ship] approach. Joseph needed to follow the same process available to ordinary people when aggrieved by reporters.

This, I learnt later, was my “mistake” No 1. But it’s a “mistake” I will make repeatedly, should there be an opportunity. I shouldn’t have to say this, but I did not edit or see that story before publication.

What was Joseph’s response? He wrote a story for GroundUp asking the question: Is Sunday World ready to do journalism or corruption?

When I read it, it said at the end that calls to me were unanswered at the time of going to print, which was bizarre for a comment piece. The story was said to have been written by Nathan Geffen, even though the calls to me came from Joseph. But this threw me off because I would have taken Geffen’s calls, if he tried, because he had not abused Kgobotlo verbally and was not seeking protection from a fellow editor. Presumably we would have had an untainted discussion about Joseph’s uncouth conduct.

I made the same point to Geffen when I ran into him at a South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) council meeting in eThekwini months ago. But then I thought it’s spilt milk and GroundUp is some title with three readers, so why even bother to respond? This was my mistake No 2. Months later, I left to join TimesLIVE.

Spirited attempt to be on TimesLIVE

In December of 2020, I was asked to unpublish a story that was supplied by GroundUp which was false. I asked, why did they send a false court story? Was their reporter not in court? Naturally, I wanted to know what went wrong so this was not repeated.

The response was flippant: “The reporter is on holiday, we will revert in January” is the summary. I believed this to be unreasonable. I had not asked for the reporter’s leave to be cancelled. All they had to do was to ask the reporter to take five minutes to explain, so they could explain to us. But no, TimesLIVE must just unpublish the falsity and wait until after the December 2020 holidays.

I told the news editors that we should stop publishing GroundUp until we get the explanation. Instead of bringing an explanation, GroundUp approached Sunday Times editor S’thembiso Msomi to get him to override my decision. I explained the background. He did not override the decision.

Unhappy, they went to Moshoeshoe Monare, then MD for news. Plainly, they went, not for the first time, to someone who was not involved in news to override a decision made by an editor. Monare listened and, I suppose, he could not give them what they wanted: reinstatement on TimesLIVE.

When the announcement of Bongani Siqoko was made, Joseph could not wait for the ink to dry, rushing to ask him if he’s happy with Makhudu’s ban on GroundUp. He again wanted managers to override me on an editorial decision.

Siqoko referred the matter to the then managing director for news, Pule Molebeledi and CEO Mzi Malunga. After looking into the issue, they dismissed Joseph’s enquiry as being baseless. Malunga was even pissed off at the sense of entitlement apparent from Joseph. But in the end, there was no basis to reverse my decision to temporarily stop GroundUp until they explained. And my decision was simple: explain how you got us to publish the opposite of what happened in court, so we know how to ensure it doesn’t happen again and then we reinstate you. I had no motivation to keep GroundUp off TimesLIVE. Keeping it off doesn’t change my life. But no, there must be a conspiracy by Makhudu to remove GroundUp on TimesLIVE permanently. No evidence is required, just a belief.

In his rush, Joseph makes elementary mistakes that confirm his true agenda.

Months later I got an inquiry from Joseph about adverts in Sunday World received from the NLC and my sin is that the adverts started coming when I was there.

In his questions to me on October 12 2022, Joseph says the “NLC spent R3.715,810 with Fundudzi Media [owners of Sunday World] and a further R8m” when I was already at TimesLIVE. But when he writes his story, Joseph, realising Sunday World has received R21m more in advertising after I left, makes no distinction between the advertising periods.

This lie by omission is deliberate. This is why the DA released a statement by Mat Cuthbert saying: “NLC paid Sunday World R24.7m under the editorship of Makhudu Sefara.” The confusion was engineered.

But lies have short legs.

The motivation for the lies were to be revealed in Joseph’s other e-mails. He asks: “One of your decisions as TimesLIVE editor was to ban the use of GroundUp content by TimesLIVE. Did this relate to things that happened between you and GroundUp while you were still editor of Sunday World?”

What things? Refusing to take Joseph’s call?

In an e-mail on April 4 2023 to Siqoko, Joseph asks: “Senior people at Sunday Times and Arenda [sic] that GroundUp approached to intervene after Sefara instituted his ban [the bugbear] on GU effectively said that he does not answer to them. Who does he report/answer to?”

Simple journalistic questions not asked

What is clear from the two e-mails is that GroundUp’s issue with me is the so-called “ban” of GroundUp on TimesLIVE. Put differently, if I value peace of mind and my job, I should get rid of the so-called ban immediately.

By not giving them what they want — access to TimesLIVE without explaining how they made us publish false information — I will continue to be harassed not just by GroundUp, but by their sidekicks at News24 and Daily Maverick, who are happy to publish substandard news stories that include my name without asking Joseph simple journalistic questions.

To help them, I will ask myself the questions they should have asked and answer them.

The first must be that before we soil Makhudu’s reputation, what exactly did he do that is unethical? What is the evidence, the smoking gun against Sefara? There’s nothing published so far. Did he assign any reporter (if so, who?) to write negative stories about GroundUp?

My answer is no. There is no reporter alive or dead that I ever assigned to write a single story on GroundUp.

Did Makhudu edit any news story or comment/analysis relating to GroundUp while he was at Sunday World? My answer is no. No-one.

Did Makhudu convene a meeting of reporters or editors and say they must contradict investigations into the NLC by GroundUp? Again, my answer is that I never even paid attention to GroundUp at the time. We were re-establishing a newspaper that had been closed by Tiso Blackstar Group. There was no time to think about Joseph and his friends at GroundUp. There is no meeting of Sunday World, when I was present, that discussed Joseph. The conspiracy exists in his head.

Even if there was a vague claim made that Makhudu behaved unethically in relation to GroundUp, those who publish these claims — if they’re interested in facts and the truth — still need to ask their reporter: What evidence do we have against Makhudu? Why is he the centre of your writing about Sunday World when it is clear, by your admission in your questions to him, that only R3.7m of R24.7m was spent on Sunday World when he was in charge?

So what’s with the fascination with Makhudu? Let’s look deeper into this.

In his purported investigation, Joseph says the attacks on him by Sunday World ended in January 2021, when veteran editor Wally Mbhele took over the reins. Contradicting himself, however, Joseph writes: “There were also puff pieces, like one published in December 2020 showcasing the NLC’s approach to preventing conflicts of interest. Another published in April 2021 is clearly an NLC advertorial but not marked as one. Instead it’s marked as news. The above pattern appeared to start in 2019 when Makhudu Sefara became editor of Sunday World.”

The fact is in December 2020 and April 2021, when these stories were published, I was already at TimesLIVE.

He cites another example of a story in May 2021, involving the South African Non-Profit Organisation Union, also published after I left.

His other example is a story involving Ndobela Lamola Inc, which he says is “a verbatim repeat of a joint statement by Ndobela Lamola Inc and the NLC”. But it too was published in July 2021, when I was at TimesLIVE.

The tragic thing about this, is that Joseph makes no pretence at distinguishing what was published when I was with the paper and when I had left. As a result, even the DA, which wanted to support him, issued a statement quoting stories published in 2021 after I left. But they wouldn’t know better because of the disingenuous reporting by Joseph.

Will not be bullied

The question to be asked is: why are the others who edited Sunday World not asked any question about adverts Sunday World received when they were in charge?

It’s simple. Two things:

• First, I did not entertain Joseph’s call after he roughed up a female reporter. He feels entitled to have been protected by me. For not doing that, I must be vilified. I must be taught a lesson, just like he threatened others. I must be linked to unethical behaviour even when there is no evidence. And momentum must be kept alive through Harber and the DA’s commentary.
• Second, I had the temerity to ask GroundUp to explain how it lied to our readers before it is reinstated on TimesLIVE. The bright sparks at GroundUp did not bother explaining. Had they done that, I would have reinstated GroundUp. But, no. They are too important to explain. I just had to be grateful that I receive their free content — even if not from errors.

Harber’s proximity to Joseph and his family blinds him to the obvious about what Joseph writes. News24 and Daily Maverick will not defend TimesLIVE or Arena any day — for obvious reasons. If there was this evidence of unethical conduct on my part, I would have long resigned and disappeared from the face of the earth.

But I am not going to be bullied by people who are acting unethically, while claiming that I am unethical. GroundUp and Joseph are trying hard to bully me, tarnishing my name without evidence, simply because they are aggrieved about being” banned” from TimesLIVE.

What they wanted is an editor who never asked questions: when they say unpublish a false story, no editor must ask them what went wrong?

If Sunday World got a news story about GroundUp wrong, they’re entitled to go to the Ombudsman at the Press Council, like everyone else, and lay a complaint. If it has merit, the paper will be forced to apologise. But no, they have Harber who will say an investigation is required.

Joseph is not entitled to call me after abusing a reporter junior enough to be his daughter. He is prepared to be unethical in his threats to Balliah and others because of his love for his daughter, who lived a cancer-lie for nine months, but willing to subject other people’s daughters in newsrooms to hell and still demand protection from peer editors — or else he will bully them too, as he’s trying with me.

The approach here is to publish half-baked investigative reports and then call for an investigation. What investigative journalism is this that publishes rumour and suppositions and then relies on Harber to call for an investigation? Aren’t investigative journalists supposed to reveal the outcome of their investigative work? Give us the facts and the truth?

If Sunday World received over R20m after my departure, why am I the one answering for things that happened in my absence?

What is clear to me — and also known to Joseph and Geffen — is that they have no basis whatsoever to accuse me of unethical behaviour. Yet I can argue that their anger at being “banned”, such as it is, on TimesLIVE, has driven their unethical pursuit at reinstatement.

They will say they don’t care about TimesLIVE but their questions to me, Siqoko and others reveal their pain at being “banned” and have used omissions, deliberate mixing of facts to tarnish my name simply because I called them out. They have used suppositions to say if Makhudu was editor even for a while, therefore it must mean he ought reasonably to have participated in some anti-Joseph conspiracy — not if such a conspiracy even exists in the first place. That’s what is sad about journalism today.

In my life, I have never wanted to respond to nonsense — umsangano! But when there is a clear agenda of unabashed self-interest — supported by some professor of journalism, some politician in the DA angered by my commentary on John Steenhuisen’s grade 12, and some Cape-based band of old, white journalists sympathetic to an erratic oompie — I must respond, even if to remind them of simple questions that ought to be asked in journalism.

I didn’t want to respond but my hand was forced. So there.