I met him through Ferial Haffajee, a fellow judge on the CNN African Journalist of the Year panel for several years and also a fellow member of the board of the World Editors Forum in those early days.
Ferial is one of the most outstanding journalists on the continent, but this article is not about her. It’s partly about the lesson I learned from Tony Weaver, formerly of the Daily Maverick of South Africa, whom Ferial introduced to me many years ago.
Take it off?
I remember Tony because of a recent request by Nigeria’s Minister of Information, Idris Mohammed, and the Director General of the State Security Service, Adeola Ajayi, that the press should remove – or downplay – reports about banditry that have become a daily fare on the front pages of Nigerian newspapers. Mohammed and Ajayi are not journalists, and journalists hate outsiders teaching them how to do their job.
Their joint news conference on June 19, calling out journalists, reminded me of my encounter with Tony in the early days of the Israeli war in Gaza. I had written a piece for Daily Maverick that was very critical of the Hamas attack on Israel. I was unsparing of the Hamas and Palestinian leadership and would have given them a whooping if I could.
