Gillian Schutte
Karyn Maughan, your recent article, “Dear Iqbal Survé, freedom of expression is not freedom to harass, lie or vilify”, exhibits a staggering level of hypocrisy and selective morality.
Masquerading as journalistic integrity, it is, in reality, a carefully crafted vendetta to delegitimise Dr Survé and Independent Media. Your approach is nothing short of a calculated attempt to erase dissent.
In your hands, journalism is no longer a tool for integrity—it has become a weapon to serve your handlers' interests, vilifying those who dare disrupt the carefully managed narrative. There is no pretending otherwise.
You are not reporting the truth or offering critique; you are part of a coordinated effort to destroy a media outlet that threatens the establishment’s hold on public perception.
You pass this off as a defence of press freedom and journalistic ethics, oblivious to the fact that many have seen through this artifice, recognising it as a ruthless campaign to silence any voice that challenges the Eurocentric, elitist narrative dominating South African media.
You protect your interests, those of your peers, and the carefully constructed image of South Africa that benefits the few at the expense of the many.
Your language is as obvious as it is contemptible. Repeatedly using terms like “harass”, “lie”, and “vilify” is not critique, Karyn; it’s a smear campaign designed to instil distrust, planting seeds of suspicion that grow into a deep-seated aversion.
Every word is calculated to shape an identity around Dr Iqbal Survé and Independent Media that renders them irredeemable in the public eye. While you try to pass this off as dialogue or debate, what you deliver is a cold act of destruction. And this is not your first attempt at manipulating public perception.
I have first-hand experience with the ruthless, coordinated attacks you and your colleagues deploy against anyone threatening your handlers’ narrative.
When I exposed Judge Mabel Jansen’s racist views on Black South Africans — her vile claims that “all Black men are baby rapers” and “all Black women are passive enablers of this” —neither you nor Anton Harber at eNCA stood in solidarity with me or the masses to whom these injurious comments applied.
Her systemic racism was secondary to your agenda. Instead, you reframed the narrative to paint me as immoral for sharing her statements. Facts were subtly twisted, suggesting that I had breached her privacy by revealing a private conversation when, in fact, our exchange first took place on a public platform.
This was a deliberate, calculated move to shield Jansen and shift public focus away from her white supremacist remarks. The personal cost of this viciousness runs deeper than most could understand.
The campaign of defamation, harassment, and cruel public scrutiny that followed was relentless and ugly, so much so that my own child, an innocent bystander, could not bear it. The toll of the collective and sustained mainstream media attack on my character, my family, and my dignity exacted a price too high; my son's anxiety for our reputation and security contributed, ultimately, to him taking his own life.
Your so-called “journalistic ethics” are a hollow cover for the abhorrent behaviour you and your colleagues practice —behaviour that is ruthless and inhuman. You yourselves are the demons you seek to construct to destroy. Your attacks on Independent Media follow this same ruthless script.
Rather than engaging in journalistic critique, you are pursuing a systematic attempt to annihilate any outlet that does not conform to your handlers’ elitist, neoliberal agenda. You and your colleagues — Harber, Marianne Thamm, Chris Roper, and others— have formed a well-oiled disinformation machine.
The coordinated way in which you reference each other’s articles, amplify each other’s work, and bolster each other’s narratives only exposes your collective agenda.
By consistently cross-referencing each other’s hit pieces, you create an echo chamber that distorts the truth to gag any alternative perspective.
Thamm’s article, “Inside Iqbal Survé’s glitchy propaganda machine”, builds on paranoid insinuations. Harber’s “Iqbal Survé and the decline of Independent Media” casts Dr Survé as a corrupting force. This only serves to reinforce the constructed narrative that you disseminate as truth.
Together, you create a wall of negativity that dominates digital space. A simple search for Dr Survé or Independent Media bombards readers with articles that paint him as “unhinged”, “reckless”, and “dangerous”.
This isn’t some organic consensus, as you claim; it’s a coldly orchestrated media campaign designed to crush dissent. The sophistication of your handlers’ tactics is disturbing. Algorithms are manipulated to push your narrative to the top, while any content challenging it is buried. Bots and automated accounts amplify your articles across social media, creating the illusion of widespread condemnation.
Articles like Roper’s “Sad world when media moguls like Iqbal Survé become profound enemies of press freedom” trend not from public interest, but from manufactured engagement, strategically boosted to shoot down any voice that might offer a defence or alternative view. This goes beyond amplification. Y
our digital “mob attacks” are intended to intimidate and suppress. Bots and anonymous accounts flood social media posts related to Independent Media, bombarding any positive engagement with abuse to deter readers from engaging with or supporting the platform. What you’re doing is digital warfare, calculated to try and destroy any chance that Independent Media has to present its side of the story.
Your language choices are designed to exploit cultural fears and biases. Through the literary device of portraying Independent Media as “irrational” and “dangerous”, you tap into deep-seated prejudices, leading readers, particularly those from middle-class white backgrounds, to view it as a destabilising force rather than a diverse platform.
This tactic goes beyond discrediting Independent Media; it creates a psychological barrier, discouraging people from considering it a legitimate source. You are building a wall of distrust, hoping to make it impenetrable.
The truth is, your campaign against Dr Survé and Independent Media isn’t driven by any genuine concern for press freedom or public interest. It’s driven by fear. Independent Media threatens the narrative you and your handlers have so carefully constructed.
Its reach extends well beyond the privileged circles you serve, connecting with South Africa’s Black majority and providing a platform for stories ignored by the mainstream. This terrifies you— the idea that a platform exists outside your control, reaching an audience you would rather keep voiceless. Independent Media’s mission to amplify the voices of the marginalised undercuts the status quo you desperately cling to.
Karyn, I see exactly what you and your colleagues are doing, and I will work to point more readers to your war against multipolar voices. For me, this is a war that your lot has engineered, scribbling notes in endless workshops with nefarious intelligence agencies.
Not even your attempts to obliquely cast doubt on US intelligence’s affiliations to your cabal’s agenda will undo the fact that your allegiance isn’t to truth but to your corporate handlers’ agenda.
You serve an elite-backed framework that seeks to quash media diversity, ensuring only a single, sanitised reality. In aligning yourself with this campaign, you reveal not only your bias but also a willingness to betray journalism’s and humanity’s fundamental principles. Independent Media continues to stand, regardless of your repeated attempts to dismantle it.
The more you attack, the more essential its voice becomes. Independent Media stands in defiance of a media landscape crafted to serve only the privileged few. Your campaign will fail, and history will not remember kindly those who sided with power over justice and who chose distortion over truth.
Like the dying empire you and your handlers serve, you claw for control, unable to recognise the imminent demise of the toxic paradigm you obsequiously bow and scrape to.
Schutte is a film-maker, social justice and race-justice activist and public intellectual