Fake news, fake publication, next level: Iqbal Survé's IOL makes up a 'journalist' to further attack truth

In 2021, ignominy fell upon the Independent Media group after Pretoria News editor Piet Rampedi made up a story about a woman, Gosiame Sithole, expecting decuplets. When he first “broke” the story on his front page, it made global headlines – so rare are multiple births on this scale. See this BBC report here. 

Shortly after, Rampedi was back in the news, this time after reports revealed that the newspaper could not back up its story. In fact, a panel appointed by Independent Media found the decuplets story was a hoax, as Rebecca Davis reported here. 

Since then, the pace of attacks on Daily Maverick has reached new, disturbing levels, culminating in the latest piece grandly titled "Daily Maverick’s pyrrhic court ‘Victory’ won’t wash off the CIA stain against it", bylined by a 'Jamie Roz'.

Now, Daily Maverick has commissioned two digital forensic reports which – together with our reporting – show that an “attack” writer called “Jamie Roz” does not exist. 

Code for Africa (www.disinfo.africa) has found that “Roz” has written only *seven articles between 15 May and 8 August 2022, stopping after our first queries to senior executives and editors at Independent Media. 



In the last article, “Roz” suggested a grand conspiracy between the judiciary and Daily Maverick after a successful suit against then student writer Modibe Julius Modiba, who has made a cottage industry out of being a disinformation driver for numerous influential figures. In August, the Gauteng High Court found him guilty of defamation and fined him R100,000. Here’s the story of Modiba’s history of what Davis calls “supersized falsehoods”.



“A word cloud of topics covered in ‘Jamie Roz’ stories shows that his main concerns are banks refusing to do business with any company tied to [Independent Media CEO Iqbal] Survé and Sekunjalo Investment Holding, and to attack Daily Maverick,” the Code for Africa report found. 



 

So who, then, is “Jamie Roz”?

“Findings indicate that Jamie Roz does not appear to have any searchable online presence, other than (the six) published articles. These include LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr accounts. 

“Jamie Roz is not listed on any of the expected databases (Media Manager or Media List) and has not interacted with any of the IOL (Independent Media news www.iol.co.za) or Falcons’ social channels,” say Spheralytical data and digital analysts, who compiled one of the reports. 

“Best to ask DM [Daily Maverick] funders, the US State Department. They can find anyone ?”