SCRUTATOR
CAN someone tell Scrutator what else is not happening at that grotto of a newsroom at the fringes of town?
It’s one thing to overprice run-of-the-mill “scoops” and certainly another to foist a bagful of boobs on readers.
Scarily, that tabloid has been doing both –– in huge dosages too!
Last week’s edition must have sunk their banal clumsiness to the lowest depths.
“Govt gazzetes authorise 8.5 to 10 percent for senior public officials. Prime Miinister Pakalitha Mosisli, right, now earns just below half a million maloti,” screamed the teaser on the tabloid’s front page.
First, if one cannot spell the prime minister’s name we wonder if we should expect him or her to know how to spell “minister”.
Dare we expect that person to write “gazette” correctly?
Second, Scrutator is curious to know when “gazzetes” started authorising anything for human beings, including “prime miinisters”.
I strongly suspect the paper is suffering an ailment of some sort, considering the torrent of gaffes that has been poisoning its copy.
Otherwise someone would have to tell me why it’s losing weight –– at an alarming rate for that matter!
At least when it had many pages, even if they bore nondescript stuff, one probably had alternative uses for them.
I’ll leave that to your very fertile imagination, especially in this time of recession when basics are not that affordable.
The tabloid’s solace for now should be that it’s not alone in abusing readers.
“. . . As one ministry says in action, but how many of this fraudulant actions are hidden beneath? It’s time to act!”
Indeed, it’s time to act –– on very dirty copy!
Otherwise it would be fraudulent to continue churning out dirt and passing it off as suitable for readers, young and impressionable minds included.
Shshshsh . . . . Scrutator has no voice to name the culprit this time round.
But my peripatetic eye will, as long as I live, keep monitoring those things that our children must not see.
Like reference to dead bodies of Mozambican mercenaries as “corps” – not corpses.
Now, I guess you have warmed up for the seriously serious stuff.
Of course I can hear someone asking what scandal we have not seen in our media.
There he was at it again!
I’m talking about the debt-ridden barrister.
Stranded, with no proper lead story for the umpteenth time, he decided to regurgitate an archived news item.
“Pay rise for PM, MPs,” screamed the headline.
This is a serious Public Lie!
For the record, all cabinet ministers and legislators were awarded salary increases together with every civil servant months ago.
And this was announced when the national budget was presented in March.
Yet, five months down the line, some journalist finally wakes up from his big slumber.
Isn’t it fraudulent for a newspaper to warm up a five-month-old story and dish it out as if it were a new discovery?
That for M10 –– enough to buy two loaves of bread.
Talk about immorality in the name of journalism.
If anyone has no clue about the objective of the story, deduce the question from the answer the “vendor” quoted in the story gave.
“While we have to eke out a meagre living on the streets, the powers that be are at it, living like kings at the expense of all of us. There can be no justification for this,” the “vendor” is quoted as having said.
It’s you who is at it, busy abusing all of us by raising false alarm.
There was nothing new about the news.
And there can be no justification for this.
Especially after committing the same crime a year ago while in the employ of another newspaper.
It’s a travesty of journalism, isn’t it?
Where Scrutator comes from it is taboo to climb on top of a table which is used to carry food or drinks with your shoes on.
That rule applies to men and women, herd boys and house girls.
The logic is simple: the gumboots, shoes or sandals that we wear every day carry a lot of dirt because we tread with them on dirty surfaces.
Nobody wants that dirt and bacteria near our food or drinks. It is called hygiene.
Besides you may never know what you may be showing off while perching on that high table.
And my dear mother –– may her soul rest in eternal peace –– also taught me that cleanliness in next to godliness.
But in the new world I believe people, especially adults, are free to exercise their democratic rights.
Among those rights is the freedom to get drunk and climb on top of the bar counter or table if you think that will enhance your height or view.
But I think in the euphoria of exercising his democratic right to dance on top of the counter my friend really lost it.
Although I am told that a security officer succeeded in persuading him not to exercise his democratic right to be nude in public they did not record similar results when they persuaded the same dude not to show off his tattered shoes on the counter.
If you don’t know what I am talking about then it means you have not been reading the newest newspaper in town.
One of the pages in the refreshing Sunday Express carried pictures of the fellow in question.
One thing that caught Scrutator’s peripatetic eye is the guy’s gapping shoes.
The foot covers have totally lost the war against attrition and they have clearly reached an advanced state of decomposition.
I wonder why the guy is still insisting on putting them on.
Maybe he is exercising his democratic right to be scruffy.
