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by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) It must surely be South Africa’s longest-running celebrity story: Joost van der Westhuizen and the great highs and lows of his extraordinary life.

huisgenoot-4-5-12-september-20131Back in the news again

Back in the news again recently with an exposé of his “healer” and news that he is fighting to stop the publication of a book (he has since lost the case – ed) by former Rapport celebrity reporter Gavin Prins about his life,  Van der Westhuizen has fascinated the South African public for more than decade —  and certainly helped the sales of magazines such as Huisgenoot and Afrikaans papers such as Rapport.

Van der Westhuizen was a celebrity sportsman long before he married Afrikaans pop star Amor Vittone in 2002  as he was a key part of  the 1995 Rugby World Cup winning team that surprised the world.

He  was the Bok who took down the much feared Jonah Lomu in the final and he went on to distinguish himself in many subsequent Bok Tests and Blue Bulls matches, retiring from international rugby in 2003 as a record cap holder.

Courted media attention

So when Van der Westhuizen married Vittone, they were the “Posh and Becks” of South Africa and the couple courted media attention, inviting Huisgenoot into their lives and home for countless celebrity spreads.

Then in 2009, Rapport and Heat magazine broke the sensational story that Van der Westhuizen had been caught on video snorting cocaine and engaging in sex play with a former stripper. At first he denied it, then later admitted it and then he apologised.

Amid the fall out, he lost his job as a commentator on SuperSport and his marriage fell apart.

Tragedy struck

Van der Westhuizen could easily have dropped off the front pages after this except that tragedy struck: he was diagnosed with motor neuron disease.

His brave fight over the past few years against the degenerative, incurable illness has earned him sympathy from an even wider audience, beyond the rugby fans and followers of the Afrikaans  celebrity scene.

Even so, the relationship between Van der Westhuizen and the news-reading public is a complex one, says Pieter du Toit, news editor of Beeld, that necessitates that the paper thinks carefully about how it presents stories about him.

Readership response

“When we exposed the ‘doctor’ (for being a quack) recently, we got quite a lot of flak from our readers that we were taking away Joost’s last hope,” Du Toit told Grubstreet. “But on the second day that we wrote about this guy not having a qualification and that he’s actually a panel beater from the Strand (in Cape Town) there was a change. Our readership said: ‘Good on you for exposing this guy, who is taking Joost for a ride’.

“It’s very interesting. Sometimes people don’t want Joost and Amor on the front page and they get tired of it. And they let us know. They ask: ‘Are we becoming a tabloid?’

“We were very, very careful not to portray Joost in a negative light (in the most recent story)…

Some parallels with Pistorius

“There are some parallels with Oscar (Pistorius). They are both successful sports people. They have partners who are successful in their own right. From a news point of view, it has the perfect mix.  With Oscar, there was a shooting on Valentine’s Day. With Joost, he was caught on camera with a stripper doing drugs off her one buttock cheek.”

Rapport editor Waldimar Pelser points out that the South African public’s fascination with Joost and Amor is not a media creation as many celebrities become so, precisely because they are adept at wooing the media for their own ends.

Even so, a story about Van der Westhuizen has to be sensational – such as the sex and drug video (in 2009, before Pelser’s editorship) – to really boost sales.

“Real suspense”

“That (sex video) story was fantastically intriguing because of the denial (by Joost). There was real suspense because it wasn’t clear from Day One – when Rapport broke the story – whether he was lying. Everyone was waiting to see who would budge first. It was like a game of chicken.

“The news value there was very clear,” says Pelser, who is a former news editor of Beeld.  “And it was that you cannot lie. Honesty is not something that you expect of some people. You expect it of everybody…  And if you’re going to capitalise on an adoring public’s trust in you – and make money off that through sponsorships, etc., then you must be willing to be subjected to critical scrutiny.”

Du Toit says: “People do have a fascination with pretty people — with successful people — and even more so when they stumble.

“As responsibly as we can”

“People are sympathetic to Van der Westhuizen and we have a duty to cover him in the final stages of his life as responsibly as we can. Our readers want us to be sensitive but they also want to know how it’s going with Joost (and his health) so it’s a very fine line for us to tread as a newspaper… And you don’t always get it right. You do it on a case-by-case basis.”

Pelser says: “There is a great amount of residual sympathy for Joost because he screwed up and then apologised – and because he was a star and then fell ill.

“We know that we will pay a price if we are seen to ever be unfair to him,” says Pelser. “And, of course, we do not believe that the single most damaging thing to him was (the sex video story) in Rapport — we don’t apologise for that because we didn’t do the damage. He did the damage.

“Gratuitous reporting a ‘no'”

“Gratuitous reporting on Joost and gratuitous probing of his private life is a ‘no’. The threshold needs to be quite high and our readers will punish us if they sense that we are abusing him. Just like in every other case — but even more so with Joost.”

— South Africa’s leading media commentator Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) offers intelligence on media, old and new. Reprinted from her site Grubstreet.

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Published by Herman Manson

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