Anyone who knows me will be aware of my long-standing gripe with the Science & Technology department at News24. They seem to have low editorial standards to start with, but today I have officially lost my cool. Today they decided to publish another Piece by Duncan Alfreds entitled SA Man Seeks Midget to Kick Ex, and here it is in it’s entirety:
Cape Town – A Randburg man has posted an advert in which he would like a midget to kick his ex-girlfriend on the shins on the Gumtree classifieds website.
“I was recently dumped and require the services of a midget to go and kick my exgirlfriend in the shins whilst she is at work,” he writes.
The man, known only as Brett, works for a marketing company, told the Star that his advert was not a joke.
“I clearly took it out because I want my ex-girlfriend to be kicked in the shins. Midget revenge is the only form of revenge that works these days,” he said.
He added that his ex had dumped him after dating for two months.
The advert had been viewed over 2 600 times by Friday and Brett rejected suggestions that his ad was discriminatory toward people with dwarfism.
“Fuck if I care. They know they are midgets. I’m not being politically correct about this.”
Brett also rejected accusations that he was promoting violence against women because the advertposted on February 27 says that his ex should be kicked “once (not too hard) in the shin, and leave”.
It is unclear how much Brett is willing to pay for the service.
- Follow Duncan on Twitter
Sure, this is funny, but it is gutter journalism and has NOTHING to do with science. Please follow Duncan on Twitter and tell him how ridiculous this article is, and then demand that he writes something of substance.
I am going to do that right now. Then I’m going to write a letter to the editorial department of News24 and express my deep disappointment at their decision to hire a pseudo-journalist like Duncan, to put him in their science portfolio, and to publish crap like this.
Disgusting!
EDIT:
Since I wrote this post, News24 deleted my comment on the article in which I criticised this infantile rubbish. I’ve posted another comment calling them out on it, let’s see how long it takes for this one to be deleted:
Wow, News 24 has deleted my original comment where I criticised them for publishing this gutter journalism as Science.
Looks like censorship is alive and well at News24. Well done guys, can’t take the heat, press delete.
It doesn’t change the fact that Duncan Alfreds submits poor-quality science journalism at every turn. In fact, I am yet to read a single decent piece by him. You would do your reputation a bigger favour if you deleted his name from your payroll instead of deleting my criticism from your website.
Edit #2:
News24 has now deleted the above comment from the article as well. They really do like to silence criticism.
