Monday, June 7, 2010

Response by Dr. Jeff Ramsay - Re: Today's Telegraph Story "Brand Botswana Logo stolen from South Africa?"

source: Republic of Botswana (21/5/10) TAUTONA TIMES for May 2010
The Electronic Press Circular of the Office of the President
"Democracy, Development, Dignity, Discipline and Delivery"


C6) 5/5/10: Response by Dr. Jeff Ramsay - Re: Today's Telegraph Story "Brand Botswana Logo stolen from South Africa?"

This is to place on record my disappointment that today's Telegraph newspaper published the above story on its front-page, also largely repeated on its page 7, in which among other things it claims that:

"At time of going to press, even Coordinator for the Government Communication and Information Systems, Dr. Jeff Ramsay, had not responded to an inquiry e-mailed to him last Wednesday"

If any such e-mail was ever sent, it was certainly not received by me.

As my cell phone number and other contacts are available to journalists, as well as those of my deputies, the claim that I have failed to respond to the Telegraph is at best disingenuous.

I further note that by their own admission the other individuals that the Telegraph claims to have also tried to reach were all out of town!

This would thus appear to be a transparent attempt on the part of Telegraph to justify running a scandalous story in the absence of critical input from relevant stakeholders.

In my personal opinion, such blatantly unethical practice only serves to further underscore the urgent need to have a properly constituted Media Council, as provided for in the Media Practitioners Act of 2008, up and running as an alternative to the expensive and time consuming option of defamation suits.

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