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Ruling (Ombuds)

Grové vs News24

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Complaint 32347

Ruling by the Deputy Press Ombud

Date of publication:

20 September 2025

Headline of publication:

“Trump says his negative media coverage is ‘illegal’”

Link: https://www.news24.com/world/live-latest-on-donald-trump-tariffs-land-expropriation-world-economy-and-south-africa-20250504-0720

(Note: the specific item complained against was included in a live feed of news related to US President Donald Trump, under the above link.  As the feed is constantly updated, the item now appears far down the list but is still accessible.)

Author: No personal byline, but the report is sourced to the news agency AFP.

Particulars

  1. A complaint was lodged on 22 September by Lourens Grové, with a request that the Public Advocate (PA) assist in formulating it. The complaint included correspondence with the public editor of News24, Dr George Claassen, who declined to accept the complaint as valid.
  2. The PA responded on October 6, declining to accept the complaint for adjudication at the Press Council, on the basis that there was no prima facie breach of the Press Code. In later correspondence, the PA also said that Grové did not have standing.
  3. On 15 October, Grové requested adjudication.
  4. I take into account the various submissions filed in this matter. Though News24 was not asked to respond to the complaint by the Press Council, I consider that their responses to Grové adequately clarify their position.

The article

  1. The brief article is headlined “Trump says his negative media coverage is ‘illegal’”. It quotes the US president attacking US media coverage, linking the statement to a controversy about free speech in the US after the suspension of a TV show that had been critical of Trump.

The complaint

  1. The complaint is that the article breaches clauses 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 10.1 of the Press Code.

Acceptance of the complaint

  1. The PA declined to accept the complaint on two grounds.
  2. Firstly, he said there was no prima facie breach of the Press Code. He argued that it was the role of the media to interpret the news, and that the report’s interpretation of Trump’s words did not cross the line into distortion.
  3. In his request for adjudication, Grové reiterated his argument on the merits at length. I will deal with the substance below.
  4. The other reason given by the PA for declining the complaint was that Grové does not have standing to make it.
  5. He referred to Section 1.1 of the Complaints Procedure, which sets out that complaints can be laid by “anyone acting in their own interest; anyone acting on behalf of another person who cannot act in his or her own name; anyone acting as a member of, or in the interest of, a group or class of persons; and an association acting in the interest of its members”. He pointed out that the Complaints Procedures does not make provision for a general complaint “in the public interest”. But, he stated, the Press Council has in fact in the past accepted complaints that can only be regarded to be “in the public interest”, for example about explicit descriptions/photographs regarding violence, sexual conduct, etc., and non-disclosure of sponsored content. According to the PA, this, however, remains very limited, and he could not find that this current complaint warrants such an exception of not following the Complaints Procedures strictly.
  6. In his request for adjudication, Grové made several points:
    • That he was personally affected as a reader, having been misled by what he says is a distortion of the facts.
    • That the broader purpose of the PCSA to promote accountable, credible journalism supports a broader view of who is entitled to complain. He writes: “The public’s right to credible information cannot be protected if no-one has standing to challenge inaccuracies that do not name them personally.”
    • That the precedent of accepting some public interest complaints should apply to his complaint, as it involves material misrepresentation of the words of an important public figure.
    • That he represents the class of people misled by the reporting.
  7. The issue of standing has come up repeatedly. In “Ms Leigh-Ann Mathys vs EWN”, then Deputy Ombud Herman Scholtz provided a useful approach to the question of when a complaint could be accepted from someone not personally implicated in the alleged breach.
  8. Scholtz said the requirement of having a personal interest should not be applied in an overly restrictive way. In fact, he pointed to several cases in which complaints from third parties had been adjudicated.
  9. At the same time, it was reasonable to impose some limits in order to avoid “opening the floodgates” of complaints “based on hearsay, assumptions, speculation or where the implicated person themselves may have chosen not to complain”.
  10. Scholtz argued that where a complaint is made in terms of the general provisions of the code, it could be considered, but where it was laid in terms of someone’s personal rights, it should not. He wrote: “It is not that complainants are restricted to those who are personally involved or implicated in a report, but that complaints have to be restricted when the complainant is trying to assert personal rights of another or where the complainant lacks personal knowledge of the facts that form the subject of the complaint.”
  11. I find the approach persuasive and note that complaints from persons not personally implicated in a report have been considered several times. Examples include “Hassen Lorgat vs The Citizen”, and “SA BDS Coalition vs SA Jewish Report”.
  12. In this case, Grové’s complaint is made in terms of 1, 1.2, 1.3 and 10.1 of the Press Code. These are all provisions that refer to the media’s general obligation to accurate reporting, not to any personal rights that may have been infringed.
  13. Though the report implicates Trump by name, the personal implications for him are greatly overshadowed by the wider issues, principles and interest at stake.
  14. In addition, I agree with the view that an overly technical application of the rules should be avoided, in order to serve the PCSA’s overall aim of promoting media accountability.
  15. I find the complaint stands to be adjudicated.

Complaint: Distortion

Arguments

  1. The complaint is that the quoted words by Donald Trump – “They’ll take a great story and make it bad. See I think it’s really illegal, personally” – were inaccurately paraphrased as “President Donald Trump on Friday bashed US media coverage that he claimed was unduly negative and therefore illegal”.
  2. The complaint is that the use of the word “therefore” creates a causal link that was not in the original; that the reference to “unduly negative coverage” generalised a specific complaint; and that the whole cast him as more authoritarian than he was. In effect, the paraphrasing distorted Trump’s views.
  3. In News24’s response, they rely on the argument that the paraphrasing represents an interpretation, and that this was shared by many other news outlets.
  4. Grové, in response, argued that it was immaterial that other outlets published a similar report, on the basis that they may all be wrong and that News24 must be answerable for its own publication, no matter what others have done.

Discussion

  1. It should be noted that publishers rely on reports from news agencies, whom they trust to deliver accurate reports of events too far away to cover directly. News24 were not in the room when Trump made his remarks.
  2. Nevertheless, Grové is correct to say that News24 must take responsibility for having published the report, and News24 has acknowledged the point.
  3. Grové is also correct to argue that similar approaches taken by other media does not prove everyone was correct.
  4. Both the Ombudsman of News24 and the PA felt that the complaint addressed a minor issue of interpretation. The PA referred to “splitting hairs”, while Dr Claassen referred to “semantics”.
  5. However, a number of points emerge if we do engage with the fine distinction the complainant seeks to make.
  6. Much like News24, the complainant and this office were also not present when Trump made his remarks, and our ability to judge the reporting is therefore limited.
  7. As it happens, however, an extended recording of the relevant press conference is available courtesy of the US network C-Span, which provides unmoderated, uncommented video of US political and government activities. The recording of just under 3 minutes is available here and provides useful context for the quoted remarks.
  8. A transcript of a longer section of Trump’s response to a reporter’s question reads:

I’m a very strong person for free speech. At the same time, when you have networks that … where I won an election like in counties, I guess it’s 2,600 to 525. It’s called landslide, a landslide times two. when you have that kind of that level of popularity or voter support as I did in the last election and yet 97 and 94% – different numbers you see different numbers with different uh stats – but 97, 94, 95, 96% of the people are against me in the sense of the, the newscasts are against me the stories are 90 they said 97% bad. So they gave me 97… They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad. See, I think that’s really illegal, personally, you can’t take … You can’t have a free airwave. You’re getting free airwaves from the United States government. And you can’t have that and say, uh, and somebody that just won an election, and I had to go through this during the election. I think it’s a miracle that I can win when 97% of the stories on the networks are bad or whatever it may be. Whether it’s 89, it doesn’t matter. It’s a tremendous number. You know it, you report it all the time and it changes. But when you have that kind of a negative reporting, fake negative reporting, when they take a great story and they make it into a bad story constantly, that’s what they do. … So uh I think it’s very sad but I, I think that reporting has to be at least accurate at least accurate to an extent. Again when somebody is given 97% of the stories are bad about a person that’s no longer free speech that’s no longer anything. That’s just cheating and they cheat and they become really members of the Democrat National Committee, that’s what they are, they networks, in my opinion. …

(The transcript was machine-generated and then checked against the audio.)

  1. It is clear that Trump’s criticism of the media centres on his perception that most of the coverage he gets is negative, with the figure 97% featuring prominently. That’s what his remarks are mainly about, and he is aggrieved by the perceived imbalance between his electoral popularity and the amount of negative coverage.  It is not clear how the figure is derived, nor why the tone of coverage should be guided by election results, but it is also not relevant to this discussion.
  2. Certainly, his is a generalised complaint, not an accusation of distortion in any particular case. Capturing his view of coverage as being “unduly negative” is perfectly justified.
  3. The accusation of distortion (taking a good story and making it bad) comes up twice in the longer section, one of them in the line that has been repeatedly quoted, and provides the basis for the accusation that the TV networks referenced campaign for the Democrats. However, the question of distortion is greatly outweighed by the allegation of negative bias against him.
  4. The move to a claim that this is illegal flows from the claim of negativity, a logic that emerges clearly later in the transcript where Trump says, “… when somebody is given 97% of the stories are bad that’s no longer free speech that’s no longer anything. That’s just cheating.”
  5. The connection is between negativity and illegality, which makes the use of the word “therefore” quite justified.
  6. As far as it is possible to make out Trump’s logic, he seems to be basing the accusation of illegality on a view that television networks are using the airwaves at the pleasure of the US government and should therefore not be negative about it, which is a surprising understanding of the principle of free speech, to put it mildly.
  7. The opening paragraph is not a simple paraphrase of the brief quote provided, but a fair summary of his overall comments. The specific quote about illegality illustrates the point.
  8. Even if the introductory paragraph was read as a reflection only of the direct quote, the interpretation is reasonable.
  9. As a whole, the reporting is accordingly quite reasonable.

Finding

  1. I find that the article did not breach clauses 1, 1.2, 1.3. of the Press Code by distorting Donald Trump’s statements.

Complaint: Misleading headline

Arguments

  1. Grové argues the headline mirrors the inaccurate reading of Trump’s comments and is therefore in itself misleading.
  2. News24 argues the headline accurately reflects the story.

Discussion

  1. The headline does reflect the contents of the story.
  2. As argued above, the way the report treats Trump’s comments is reasonable.
  3. The headline is therefore quite reasonable.

Finding

  1. I find that the article did not breach clause 10.1 of the Press Code by publishing a misleading headline.

Ruling

  1. The complaint of a breach of clauses 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 10.1 is dismissed.

Appeal

  1. The Complaints Procedures lay down that, within seven working days of receipt of this decision, either party may apply for leave to appeal to the Chairperson of the SA Press Appeals Panel, Judge Bernard Ngoepe, fully setting out the grounds of appeal. He can be contacted at Khanyim@ombudsman.org.za

Ruling by
Franz Krüger, Deputy Press Ombud
10 December 2025

 

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