M&G intern suspended for comment

A Mail & Guardian (M&G) intern has been suspended for posting an anti-Semitic comment on Facebook.

The intern, Ngoako Matsha, had been a trainee at the newspaper since February. Matsha was commenting on a question posted by a Facebook user asking for a “basic decent history of apartheid”.

Responding to the comment thread, Matsha posted: "You racists! No wonder Hitler killed all the Jews, because you're all a bunch of racists."

M&G editor, Nic Dawes, was alerted to the comment via Twitter. Dawes quickly responded, saying: “Thanks for alerting me to this. We utterly repudiate his comments and are taking immediate action.”

After confirming the authenticity of the comment, Dawes suspended Matsha.

Responding to more tweets about the incident, Dawes tweeted: “Expressing approval for the holocaust, Rwandan genocide, apartheid, any act of race-hatred is grounds for disciplinary action.”

In an e-mail circulated to M&G staff, Dawes wrote: “The remarks made on Facebook discussion are fundamentally at odds with the most fundamental values of the Mail & Guardian, the Constitution, and basic human decency. Justifying the Holocaust in this fashion is hate speech and is completely unacceptable in any forum.”

Matsha was suspended pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing.

The incident raises concerns regarding the need for a social media policy within media organisations.

Earlier this year, Reuters released its social media policy, which instructs journalists to avoid exposing bias online and tells them specifically not to break news on Twitter.

Paul Jacobson, of Jacobson Attorneys, in a blog post on the issue of social media policies earlier this year, wrote that: “The simple fact is that employees often make comments on Twitter or Facebook, which range from being ill-advised to malicious, and these comments can and often do impact negatively on the company's brand.

“Malicious employees will act maliciously regardless, but I believe that most employees are uninformed about the risks their activities pose to their employers.”