eTV+even+worse+than+SABC+news,+Vukani+Mde,+Weekender

Business Day Weekender, 2006/08/05 12:00:00 AM
=Not the seven o’clock news=


 * Vukani Mde**

WHAT with the SABC shedding credibility by the bucketload every day, I found myself reluctantly switching to e.tv news one evening this week. Now let me tell you about my relationship with e. tv. I switched off soon after 9/11, when the channel morphed into Fox on steroids. So I have to be really gatvol to tune into Live at Seven.

But there I was this week, listening intently while failed Hollywood action hero Pat Pillay tried bravely to explain my world to me. Then something strange happened.

Pat suddenly clamped up, drew in his gut and squinted very Chuck Norris-like at the camera. He explained, in the way that hard men in the movies can be said to “explain”, that e.tv had made a “mistake” last week in broadcasting apparently “offensive” remarks from a march against Israel’s systematic destruction of Lebanon. Apparently one of the marchers had made the throw-away remark that Israel had killed more women and children than Hitler. e.tv, and Pat, regretted this and reflected that they should have had no part in airing this patently “untrue” statement.

Huh? I was a bit taken aback here. In the ensuing week had e.tv actually gone to do a count, and found the protester’s statement “untrue”? It’s probable that Hitler dispatched more women and children. After all, we know he killed 6-million European Jews. In fact, you can hold the man responsible for every Second World War death. A very high number of those will have been women and children.

But can the marcher’s statement be declared prima facie untrue, considering the state of Israel has been involved in the wanton slaughter of Palestinian women and children for generations now? If one should do a painstaking count to determine the winner of the gory killing contest, the Nazis would surely win hands down.

Which is beside the point, of course. What was remarkable for me was that e.tv was apologising for broadcasting the news. They were not concerned with the truth or lack thereof in the statement. There was never even any suggestion that their report endorsed the views of the marcher. They were apologising for the “mistake” of carrying it on air. Who leaned on you behind the scenes, Pat? Needless to say I’m now back with SABC every night, trying to sift out the news from under all the bullshit.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/TarkArticle.aspx?ID=2167462**

409 words