Did the Sunday Times make up it’s story about SA male prostitute?
Posted on May 28th, 2007 by Richard Catto 4,244 views
Yesterday, the Sunday Times published an article about sa male prostitute, wherein they claim to have had email contact with him.
They apparently initiated contact by posting a comment in his blog and received a reply by email. He allegedly calls himself Skye, is 30 years old and is living in Australia with his girlfriend.
Thing is, there’s no comment in his blog by the Sunday Times. Although comment moderation is turned on, he has already approved two comments, both of low quality. Comments by myself and another blogger, Johan Swarts, have not been approved (yet). It seems to me that a comment by the Sunday Times would be approved merely for the status value of having a major South African newspaper comment in your blog.
According to the Sunday Times, Skye says he has received only two emails so far. One from the Independent Democrats, threatening him with investigation by the Scorpions and another allegedly from one of the people he blogged about.
SA male prostitute publishes a contact email address on his blog. I sent an email to it on Friday evening (May 25 2007) and got a bounce back. The email address does not exist. The yahoo address he published ends in co.uk. I changed it to .com and that email did not bounce, indicating that it does exist. The yahoo ID was created on the same day as he made his first blog entry, so I am reasonably confident that my second email was sent to the correct person, yet Skye says he only received two emails, neither from me.
Skye, apparently, according to the Sunday Times, doesn’t know about all the fuss around his blog. However, he has been using his WordPress.com blog account and the WordPress dashboard would show him all the incoming links from all the many bloggers that are now linking to him. When bloggers see a new incoming link, curiosity compells us to go look at what they are saying about us.
Was Skye playing dumb? Or did the Sunday Times invent the whole story?
One last thing – if the Sunday Times is indeed in possession of emails from Skye, and they originated from yahoo, then they may also have his real IP address which would allow Skye to be traced. Supposedly, the police are investigating this matter, even though no crime seems to have been committed. Are the police, who are apparently investigating a civil case, now going to demand that the Sunday Times provide them with the emails they received from Skye?
When can the public expect to hear a straight story from the Media on this whole charade?
Tags: hoax, Independent Democrats, lying swine, Patricia de Lille, sa male prostitute, Simon Grindrod, Skye, South African Blogosphere, Sunday Times
Filed under South African Blogosphere | 13 Comments »
