The Editor of the Pretoria News has reluctantly admitted he did a shoddy job with his false report that a Tembisa woman had given birth to 10 babies pre-term.
After two weeks of taking flak for the fib, Piet Rampedi has admitted he didn’t seek any proof of the record of multiple births he wrote about simply because “he trusted” his sources.
Besides, he said all he wanted to do was write “a feel-good story for SA” that would put “the country on the map”.
The embarrassing climbdown after the health department and SA National Editors Forum dismissed the story as false, come two weeks after the first report.
In an email to his boss that has become public, Rampedi admits he, “never demanded documentary proof of the pregnancy, such as scanners and clinic cards, for instance, as I would normally do with an investigative story. There was nothing to investigate, I thought.”
The undeniable truth is that Gosiame Sithole did not give birth to Decuplets as reported by the Pretoria News and IOL.
The 37-year-old woman, whose pictures taken during her supposed pregnancy look like she stuffed a continental pillow under her dress, is now undergoing a psychological evaluation.
It remains to be seen if the owner of Pretoria News and IOl, Iqbal Survé, will ask the parents of the non-existent decuplets to return his one million rand donation.
This week Dr. Survé said his media legacy will be that he stands by his editors,
