It seems that my suspicion yesterday that the Times Sunday invented a source of information in a report about Swaziland Prime Minister Themba Dlamini’s trip to the Bahamas was well founded.
The Times Sunday’s companion newspaper the Times of Swaziland had a grovelling front page apology to the Prime Minister, the Swazi Cabinet and just about everybody else as well yesterday (29 January 2008).
The Times Sunday (27 January 2008) had reported that the Prime Minister took his pastor with him when he went on a trip to the Bahamas to collect an award for his ‘humanitarianism’. The Times Sunday reported that the Prime Minister said he personally paid the expenses for the pastor to join him on the trip. The newspaper then cited unnamed ‘sources’ saying that the cost of the pastor’s trip came from government funds.
Yesterday (29 January 2008), I queried whether we could believe the newspaper because it based its information on ‘sources’ which it did not name. I wrote, ‘it is very difficult to believe newspapers when they do not reveal the source of their information’.
Yesterday the Times published this fulsome apology on its front page.
In an article carried in the Times Sunday – PM Takes His Pastor to Bahamas – an impression was created that we were disputing the PM’s word when he said he had paid for his pastor Phila Mathunjwa to accompany him by quoting our sources as saying part of the pastor’s expenses were borne by government. The truth is that the PM paid for all his pastor’s fares. We wish to unreservedly apologise to the PM, his Cabinet and all concerned.
As apologies go this one is pretty abject. But it is not quite up to the standard of the apology made by both the Times and the Times Sunday last March when it published an article about King Mswati III after publishing this from the Afrol news agency
‘Swaziland is increasingly paralysed by poor governance, corruption and the private spending of authoritarian King Mswati III and his large royal family. The growing social crisis in the country and the lessening interest of donors to support King Mswati’s regime has also created escalating needs for social services beyond the scale of national budgets.’
When this appeared the king threatened to close down the African Echo, the group that owns the Times and the Times Sunday, unless a grovelling apology was forthcoming. The apology duly appeared.
See also
SWAZI PEOPLE HAVE NO RIGHT TO KNOW
CLOSURE THREAT TO TIMES
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