The Daily Maverick is under the spotlight following its handling of Gaza-related content, which intensified after Professor Pierre de Vos, a prominent law scholar, claimed on X (formerly Twitter) that editor Jillian Green told him the publication would not publish his Gaza reflection piece.

On Thursday, De Vos, who holds the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Constitutional Governance at the University of Cape Town, posted that Green informed him the reflection would not be published and that he had published the piece on his blog instead. 

“First time DM has ever spiked a piece I submitted to them. I published the piece on my Blog instead,” he wrote on X.

De Vos’s revelation comes as a UN classification system used to determine access to food has officially declared famine in Gaza on Friday, saying more than half a million Palestinians are facing catastrophic famine conditions, which include starvation, destitution and death, adding to the 60,000 people killed by Israel, with nearly a third of the dead under the age of 18.

IOL’s request for comment was unsuccessful, as Green declined to answer questions about how publishing Gaza opinion pieces contributes to public debate and democratic decision-making, whether the Daily Maverick will stop publishing Gaza-related opinions, or whether a policy change has affected Gaza content. 

IOL also sought comment on whether her actions interfere with newsroom processes or editorial independence amid the allegations, but Green refused to engage.

The allegations come amid broader scrutiny of editorial decisions at South African outlets regarding Gaza coverage and opinion pieces. 

In his piece, de Vos raises concerns about the dehumanising of genocide by apologists who, in defence of the genocide being committed by Israel, dismiss the suffering of others in Palestine.

“Last week I posted a message on Facebook and the site formally known as Twitter (some of us luddites still maintain a presence on these sites) to alert people to an upcoming protest march in Sea Point against the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, as well as the regime’s cold-blooded assassination of journalists working in Gaza.”

“The negative responses – many of them in Afrikaans – came in thick and fast, mostly abusive, angry, and incoherent, with the usual sprinkling of homophobia in between, ” de Vos wrote.

He added that “Palestinians were human beings with infinite and equal worth and thus like everybody else deserving of being treated as individual human beings and not as non-beings who could be starved and murdered for no other reason than that they are Palestinians.”

In related coverage, Muslim News reported on Friday on a separate matter involving former press ombud Johan Retief, who criticized the Sunday Times and The Citizen for failing to disclose sponsorship of trips to Israel by the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD)

He argued that such sponsorship constitutes a conflict of interest and compromises editorial independence.

Retief invoked Articles 2.1 to 3.2 of the Press Code, which warns that the media should not allow commercial or other non-professional considerations to influence reporting and should indicate when outside organisations have contributed to news gathering. 

He stated that seasoned journalists should have known to disclose sponsorship and described the omission as a scandal eroding the credibility of those publications and South African media generally.

“To me, it is unthinkable that newspapers with the stature of those two would fail to mention that the SAJBD had sponsored their excursion,” Retief added.

thabo.makwakwak@inl.co.za

IOL Politics

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