Newspapers don’t publish

Newstands and paper racks across the world were utterly bare yesterday, after news organisations worldwide failed to publish a single newspaper because “nothing bad happened”.

“As we all know, traumatic, horrifying, shallow or fear-mongering stories are our bread and butter,” said News Media Expert Ngud Gnuus. “But yesterday, there was no war, no famine, no murder, no rapes, no burglaries, no car accidents… nothing. How can we make a 24-page newspaper if no one dies or does something that makes you want to draw the curtains, stay locked indoors all day or just straight-out kill yourself?”

Gnuus went on to say that, despite the ever-worsening conflict in the Gaza strip and between Israel and Palestine, deeping strife and socioeconomic disparities across the seven continents and rampant crime rates, there was somehow nothing bad enough happening out of which to make an endlessly repeating loop of controversy and stern-anchored news coverage.

“It makes no sense, we know, but nothing bad happened. Usually there are any thousands of examples which we can shock and horrify you with, but yesterday it was only good stuff. How can we possibly sell papers with that?”

However, some newspapers have decided to rise to the challenge, releasing small online reports in spite of yesterday’s paucity of source material.

“We’ve decided to put a different spin on it,” said Editor of CNN Deborah Hardings. “We have headlines like World braces itself for inevitable explosion of crime, death and Bus full of School kids will definitely careen off road into ravine and blow up tomorrow, say experts. If the news media knows one thing, it’s how to turn no story into the top story of the day. Just look at any news story where our cameras and microphones are outside in the street or at a press conference or even outside a hospital where a royal baby is about to be born. Usually in these spots, we are just waiting for something to happen. That’s news, baby.”

Muse and Abuse will keep you updated today, as more nothing happens.

Football “still definitely newsworthy” – BBC

It was a resounding victory for journalism today, after football, rugby, cricket, tennis – as well as many other sports codes including but not limited to curling, archery, bowling, darts, pool, rowing and professional tiddlywinks – were reaffirmed as “still definitely newsworthy and important journalism” by a BBC-funded study.

“For years now our screens have been filled with hundreds and thousands of hours of slow-motion replays, critical analysis and up-to-the-minute updates on everything sports-related, like match scores, financial transfers, or even who is fucking whose wife in the national team,” said a spokesperson for the BBC. “Today, we are pleased to announce that these events are still as important as ever, and deserve their hours-long slots just after international affairs and current events.”

The study has irrefutably proven that football – along with all sport – is still on par with disease, war, political scandals and the myriad other important current events that define our generation and necessitate ceaseless coverage and debate.

“Although football was first started as a social experiment in the 1960s to see how much a human being can be paid for doing as little and as inconsequential, meaningless-in-the-grand-scope-of-the-universe work as possible, it quickly blossomed into something as important as Ebola killing white people, or famine killing brown people, or war,” said the study. “Hence the dozens of channels dedicated to every goddamn fart Lionel Messi makes.”

The study has since been welcomed and applauded by leading institutes of journalism and media studies.

“People misunderstand sport,” said professor Rum Rogeny of the Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies. “It’s not an opium of the people designed to distract them with irrelevant and endless arguments about who has the better team or the most trophies and titles or who beat who in the umpteenth iteration of a packet-of-air-kicking-contest between two groups of millionaires. Soccer is relevant. It's the only time God ever does anything on Earth. It’s politics but with a ball. It’s war, but with better hair and fake injuries."

In spite of mounting criticism from dissenting critical voices who steadfastly claim (in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, of course) that sport is a form of ‘soft politics’ that allows you to pretend to take part in pseudo-political arguments without any of the reprisals or repercussions of holding a real political view – much like a child walking around in his father’s oversized shoes in imaginary games of ‘play-play’ – many thousands of normal people around the world have welcomed the study.

“Football is super important,” said a man counting an imaginary list with his fingers. “It has kicking. It has passing. It has tackles – some of these tackles are illegal. Some are in a grey area. These are important debates. Debates which the news tries to distract us from with news like which country is invading which country, or new about stupid so-called ‘mass protests’ in Mexico City.”

The study also definitely ruled out the possibility of think topics, debates, art exhibitions or any kind of cultural thing as ‘news’.

“Even things like massive scientific accomplishments – like a ten-year project to land a tiny satellite on a comet one hundred million miles away – are fucking definitely not news. The thing is, how many people really understand science enough to make an opinion on it? There just isn’t any controversy around these events. How are we supposed to get ceaseless heated debates, long, angry blogposts and opinion columns, pages and pages of incensed comments defiantly touting their entrenched viewpoint, and metres of print responding not just to the story, but also responding to responses - and therefore endless pageviews and unfathomable advertising revenue – out of that boring crap? That’s why we make it more about the little things. Like sexist shirts. Now THAT is news.”

Muse and Abuse would like to invite any reader who didn't understand this to form a very angry opinion about it and write their own blog on why we're a bunch of morons.

ISIS launches “most successful recruitment videos yet”

Following on from previous successful recruitment strategies and PR tactics, fundamentalist Jihadist group ISIS has today announced the launch of their most successful series of calls to anti-West, anti-Imperialist arms yet.

“All those scary bomb videos and grunts training with ak47s and rolling in the dust, leopard-crawling under barbed wire and past burning tyres, these only go so far,” said head of the pro-Islamic-caliphate movement Thea Rorrist. “If you really want to instil a burning, irrevocable hatred for all things American and its deluded, privileged, detestable citizens, then you have to go that extra mile.”

As such, ISIS is delighted to announce the release of American Idol Season 426 and America’s Got Talent Season 283. It has reportedly been a resounding victory.

“I was watching TV the other day when [the ISIS recruitment videos] came on,” said one American man. “After just four minutes of that pretentious, exploitative ‘it’s my dream’ crap, and all that shallow, deluded narcissism guided by a desire to be worshiped by thousands for being what is actually a talentless shmuck, even I, a God-fearing, rootin’, tootin’ Texan, was denouncing the hedonism of my culture and calling for the death of all American men and women.”

Media analysts agree.

“If we look closely at the hateful, pro-extremist-Islam propaganda, we see tropes designed for maximum effect,” said Television studies lecturer Harold Cress.

“Every four seconds, we are battered with stirring, nationalistic music and endless images of waving American flags. You know, scenes more patriotic than an exploding, bible-clawing, red-white-and-blue Bald Eagle shooting laser beams out of its eyes and ejaculating furiously on a pile of nukes and Chevy trucks emblazoned with the words ‘democracy’, ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’.”

These images were enhanced by other hate-mongering tactics.

“Then they add little inserts, like the glaringly knee-jerk emotional shallowness of having an obviously-ineligible four-year-old child singing Home of the Free for the AW-factor, and the talentless douche judges who have even less singing or acting ability than those they scorn and deride, not to mention the sickening product-placement. Really, it makes my machete-hand very twitchy indeed.”

In spite of some controversy over the images, ISIS remains steadfast that these depictions of American culture are far less horrific than than they how the West portrays their particular ideologies.

“Hell, the media might give us a bad rep, but at least we don’t belittle people and destroy their hopes and dreams before we behead them," said Rorrsit. “We like to think we’re a little more respectful than that.”

ISIS would like to thank CNN, BBC and Sky News for giving them an audience of millions of readers, listeners, and viewers on dozens of different channels, formats and social media platforms to spread their messages and videos across the globe.

BREAKING NEWS – TV showing mysterious images

BREAKING NEWS – 8:17am

There is confusion this morning, as journalists and media experts are trying to make sense of a new series of images that have just been release on our televisions.

At this moment we’re not too sure what these images are, but rest assured that we’ll be bringing in a team of specialists to try and make sense of these unfathomable photos. Details are limited right now, but the first image we’re seeing is of some large, shapeless blue mass covered in greenish blobs. Dotted all over the image are tiny cylinder-shaped things that appear to be silver and pointed, with some orange-coloured mess on one end. Again, we aren’t sure what we’re looking at – they could be tiny cigars – but we will keep you updated as this story progresses.

UPDATE – 8:27am

More breaking news on our top story this morning of the strange images covering our TV. We’re not sure if this is linked with all the other video footage of heads of state giving tearful speeches from unknown locations, but NASA has released another image, perhaps even more confounding than the first.

Again, we must stress that the meaning of these images is not clear, but it does appear that the tiny cigars have disappeared only to been replaced by smallish yellow-and-black circular plates, each surrounded by a small circle of concentric red rings. As always, we will keep you updated as this more details on this story come into public knowledge.

UPDATE – 8.33am

Back to our top story this morning, NASA and a team of scientists and researchers have released a new series of images to the public. Again, details at this time are unclear, but it appears that some kind of white face-like figure next to a number keeps flashing intermittently on our television screens. This number has steadily increased to be almost nine digits long in the course of just a few hours. In-house experts and media specialists still have no clue what these figures might mean, but what we can confirm that this is a very, very high number.

“This is perhaps one of the biggest numbers we’ve seen on TV in many, many years,” said numbers expert Matt Matison, one of the few professionals we could contact (there seems to be some kind of a problem with telephone services). “We can only assume this means some kind of big event has happened.”

Again, exact details are sketchy, and finding the meaning to these images is proving difficult as large parts of the internet seem to have gone offline, and so we will keep readers updated as this story continues to unfold.

UPDATE – 8.37am

NASA has done it again. The latest in the series of images shows what we can confirm is definitely a figure of a human being standing next to what seems to be a large grey square with a big crack in it. We’re not sure what caused the crack, or why this person is standing next to this giant square, or even what kind of grey object would be that big, but as always we will keep you updated on this news event as it unfurls.

UPDATE – 8.39am

We still have very few details on this story. At the time of going to press the government and various heads of state had not replied to requests for comment. Let us know in the comments below what you think these strange images could possibly mean. And as always, we will keep you updated.

And if no further details come to light, well, it’s not like what would be the end of the world.

Mass media Christmas comes early

The global mass media are singing in jubilation today, after a religiously and racially motivated suicide bombing carried out by two interracial handicapped Ebola-infected pregnant lesbians killed 253 people in a mall during a hurricane last weekend.

Current death estimates now include at least 182 white people, three famous premiere league footballers, eighteen children with adorable family photos and one middling pop star.

“This really is the story of a lifetime,” said Chief News Editor for SkyNews Miss Leigh Dzew. “Just look at it: it ticks all the boxes – sex, death, religion, race, football, pop culture and the weather? I mean, we would have been just happy with such a death toll of white faces – especially when they’re children – but we also get dealt a hand that includes themes of gun control, terrorism, sex and football stars AND celebrities? It’s almost too good to be true!”

“The space for news coverage here is infinite, endless,” said the CEO of SkyNews while trying to hide an enormous money-erection. “We can have on-air debates between violently disagreeing sides. We can open up comments sections. We can cover minute details of each of the victims’ lives. We can go on a no-holds-barred in-depth expose of the killers’ histories, childhoods, favourite brand of breakfast cereal, everything. This is billions of pageviews. It’s innumerable online comments, reaction blogs and reader flamewars. It’s thousands of hours of television. God, just think how much advertising revenue that is!”

Many editors have welcomed the news with huge smiles, saying what it a relief has been – particularly in light of the news dry season they’ve been suffering.

“We’ve had a bit of a tough time these past few weeks,” said editor of the Sunday Times, Tabby Loids. “Sure, we’ve had Boko Haram, Ebola, shooting sprees and Russian missile strikes to keep us busy cranking the arm of our fear machine, but what with Mandela’s death naught but a distant memory and Oscar’s trial now having a reached a premature end, we’ve been grasping at straws. I mean, we have been coping – you know, derailing focus from massive scientific achievements and simultaneously throwing a smoke bomb over the real, invisible issues of an entire scientific industry by having pages-long coverage of an ugly shirt – but it’s been hard.”

Many other news editors agree.

“This is more than we could have dreamed of,” said another. “I mean, I was crossing my fingers for a school bus full of children to be kidnapped or their school shot up by a psychopathic madman, or maybe for a corrupt oil company to cause a massive spill that utterly devastates hundreds of miles of pristine coast line and drives an entire species of marine birdlife into extinction, but this… we’d never thought it would come like this. This is Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah, Eid, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King Day and all of our birthdays wrapped in one beautiful, rare package.”

Editors’ only fears, they now say, is that they have too much on their plate.

“We are an industry of capable of creating a planetwide system of unnecessary panic and baseless fear around a disease 99.999% of all humans will never get (we do this every few years, even though you’re more likely to die choking on this blogsite),” said Loids. “So how are we supposed to deal with such extensive and rich subject matter?”

News analysts now say that this coming coverage could potentially cause mass riots, copycat attacks and global hysteria by perhaps as early as next Friday – a prospect that has editors on the edge of their seats.

“We have to be very careful with this story,” said Lee. “One word out of place, one misplaced fact, one incorrect quotation… and we could miss out on what may be the news event we’ve all been waiting for.”

Pic: Public Domain, from US National Archives (524396 NARA National Archives and Records Administration)

New Rhodes campus newspaper causes stir

The boring campus news scene got an injection of fresh blood and excitement last week, after a bunch of first years who do journalism kind of put their heads together and worked long, frustrating hours to increase the number of student-driven publications that all students can ignore or make fun of by one.

The hotly-debated newspaper, which has been lovingly dubbed “the Regressive”, has been described by many students as “an exciting paper” that “gets the stories we want to read, with all those juicy, saucy details you never see in other newspapers”.

“We just love it,” said one student who got all the way to the second page of the newspaper, a campus record. “Most other papers just concentrate on water crises or boring student stuff and miss out on the important issues. Also, it doesn’t have lots of boring, distracting pictures to draw your eyes away from the insightful, cutting-edge news analysis and commentary. One picture per page and a whole A3 of five-column, font-size-12 text: just what newsreaders love to pieces!”

pic: Flickr.com, Saaleha Bamjee,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/saaleha/6871692605/

The newspaper has since been lauded by Journalism and Media Studies lecturers at the Africa Media Matrix journalism school as “the controversial pioneer of a new kind of post-traditional journalism.”

“Most other newspapers tend to lose traction in hard-hitting reportage because they abide by so-called and overrated ‘news values’ and ‘journalistic integrity’, which stem from the dark ages of print publications and are still around even today,” said the paper’s editor Cherr Nalism. “They use too-fancy typography and too many pictures, which really takes away from the deeper intricacies of the stories and the hidden facts that are crucial to their reportage, like what a murder victim’s two-year old son looks like and what his name is, or why that guy from UCT was entirely justified in committing acts of violence against other people, male or female.”

Nalism added that they wanted to steer away from “media churn fodder” that is “overreported and soulless” and instead focus on the critical and localised grassroots issues that affect the Grahamstonian and Rhodent.

“Our media and the international media tend to overbloat and homogenise content to just one or two stories with no real creativity or importance,” said Nalism. “But we bring to you deeper coverage of the really important stuff that isn’t all over the news every damn day. Things like the little-known and entirely relevant Oscar Pistorius murder trial, or one particular person’s opinion on how Hip Hop is dead.”

Quality, Nalism says, is also very important.

”Things like spelling and grammar just make for a credible, good paper,” he said. “if you read ours, you won’t find a single word misspeled mispelt misspelt misspelted you won’t find a single word done in a spelling that is incorrect.”

The newspaper also carries a depth of political insight and commentary that is rivalled only by established and lauded Political Science reference works, like See Spot Run or the world-famous International Politics analysis The Faraway Tree by Blyton, E et al.

The campus publication is now set to go into its second issue, and already it is making a dent in other papers’ readerships.

One such newspaper that is already feeling the brunt of this new and superior form of Journalism for Public Interestingness is the famous and established Coppie-Paste, which has been run by smug self-loving writers since making fun of your grammar was cool.

“Coppie-Paste is by now familiar to all students on campus, because of its bold and unique brand colour choice,” said student media historian Karl Bondaytin . “Not many know this, but originally they chose the colour to represent both their editorial team and their popularity on campus: it’s mostly white and only partially read.”

Many students, however, who definitely are not me and who definitely did NOT work there for four years and are certainly not biased in favour of it, defended the paper as “still the best campus newspaper”, which is kind of like deciding which brand of knife you prefer gouging your eyes out with.

The other campus contender which has felt its readership whittled down from the all-time records to just a normal readership level (from four readers to two) was the semesterly Hacked-and-Late. Though the same students in the previous paragraph say it’s “definitely more shit because reasons and my opinion”, there were many who applauded the paper’s “lesser known and wonderful qualities.”

“Every time I spill something on the floor,” said fourth-year student Jake Hardings, “every time I need put down a layer between the kitchen floor and my cat’s turds, every time I need a protective covering over glasses: who comes to my aid but those fine ladies and gentlemen at that good paper. I don’t know what I’d do without them. “

Readers wanting to check out the news in the Progressive are recommended to think about that decision whilst reading the rest of this blog.

Nkandla report now "least read thing on the planet"

Public Protector Thuli Madonsela is to be honoured with a prestigious global award this week, after her highly-anticipated Nkandla Report, entitled "Secure in Comfort", narrowly beat the Ten Commandments, most parts of Academic readings given to University students and 99.5463% of Facebook statuses and Tweets to become the "Least Read Thing Currently On The Planet."

According to Dr Ihg Noars of the Selection Committee for These Kinds of Awards, Madonsela defeated many thousands of other, equally important documents such as Parliamentary Bills, Legislatural Proposals, critical news reports and extensive newspaper reportage to cinch the coveted trophy.

"Everyone is arguing about it, throwing around the phrases 'Nkandla' this and 'report' that and it generally defines the current South African focus in all aspects of our society - social, political, digital and Office-Water-Cooler-ial," he said to gathered reporters who also hadn't read the full report and just skimmed bits and pieces here and there, early this morning, "but who has actually read it? Not even me."

However, Noars was quick to point out that Madonsela had only narrowly beat her closest competitor - the website where the report is available for full download, www.publicprotector.org/library/investigation_report/2013-14/Final%20Report%2019%20March%202014%20.pdf - to snatch up the honour.

"It was flippen' close," he said.

However, the decision to award Madonsela the covetted title has been heatedly protested and refuted by many others, including Apple, Inc. and those people who hand out fliers for Traditional Healers, gold merchants and cheap plumbing services on the sides of roads and pavements outside stores.

"Years and years of well-documented statistical fact show that it is not the Nkandal report, or even the Public Protector website, that is the least read thing on the planet," said Apple executive CEO Hugh Wurriptof, "but our Legal Terms and Agreements and Conditions of Use documents. How many thousands of times have people just clicked 'Accept' without knowing that they've agreed to, when we want, take all their personal data, possetions and internal organs? Literally millions."

In spite of this, thousands of South Africans and ANC Ministers and Members of Parliament have backed Madonsela's claim, saying that she "utterly deserves this award."

"It is literally my job to read this document so that I can serve the public to the best of my ability," said ANC Minister of Blindly Defending an Untenable Position on the ANC's Mass Pilliaging of State Funds Slip Ery-slohps. "I mean, I've shouted at people in Parliament about how the President is blameless and not guilty, and I don't even know what - if anything - he has been accused of."

Madonsela is expected to be conferred this presitigious award next week.

"I'm happy to receive this award," she said to the gathered audience in a statement that no one will ever take the time to fully read, and instead just rely on news sites like this to get the gist of, "but maybe someone can read it? Pretty please?"

Study: everything causes cancer

A study looking at the thousands of studies produced every year has discovered that everything on the planet causes cancer.


According to Jake Hardington, lead researcher at the Institute of Studies into Studies, this newly published report, which looked into the mass of innumerable papers covering the potential causes of cancer between 1908 and 2013, has determined that "everything is a potential carcinogen."



"We've looked into a plethora of claims, and we've found that everything on this death bowl we call a world contributes to cancerous growths," said co-head of the research team Gess Timate.

According to Timate, they have seen papers suggesting that a variety of seemingless harmless agents actually cause tumorous growths.

"Things like milk, reusing plastic bottles, that silvery stuff on scratch cards... even oral sex is not safe."

When asked whether these studies were peer-reviewed or backed up with scientific data, Timate just laughed. "I don't think that things like that matter. This is CANCER we are talking about!"

The shocking study has shocked scientists across the globe, with its shocking finds, such as the shocking new Amplified Delay Theory (ADT), which is a truly shocking theory indeed. Shocking. Did we mention it was shocking?

Timate explained that according to ADT the higher the amount of time that passes  after your exposure to a potential carcinogen, the higher your risk of dying from seemingly unrelated causes.

"We had one man who ate a banana when he was 4," he said to the gathered reporters, who will die of cancer in twelve years' time because of prolonged exposure to a man talking on a podium. "Bananas have high amounts of Potassium 40, or K-40, a radioactive isotope of this Group One metal. This radiation built up over 40 years, eventually causing a microtumor that got him shot eight times in a burglary-gone-wrong," he said.

Since the release, thousands of worried people have reportedly changed their lifestyles to avoid possible causes of cancer.

"When I read the report that was grossly misunderstood by journalists and edited to produce a fear-mongering scare tactic that sells papers, such as the MRM vaccine scandal a few years back, I immediately stopped eating ice cream, wearing black hats, and tying my shoe laces," said local resident James Fisher.

New studies suggest that even a cure for cancer
might be a possible carcinogen.

However, scientists have been quick to point out that such measures are futile.

"You can stop eating certain foods, or doing certain things, but there will always be something unavoidable that you have to do that will still cause cancer," said a man who for some reason has the letters P, H and D after his name. "Like breathing. Studies have shown that the more breaths you take in your life, the higher your risk of dying."

However, recent reports have suggested that dying is a potential cure that needs to be investigated. 

"We studied the corpses of animals and people and exhumed hundreds of post-life specimens, and have found that 100% of these cases had strangely developed absolutely no cancerous tumors," explained the author of the 200-page report Frank N. Stein. "There are some unwanted side-effects of this sort of treatment, such as a loss of conscious thought, a dramatic decrease in vital functions, and so on, but we think that the benefits outweigh the negatives. 

Meanwhile, similar news sources have recently reported on studies that have found that people with cancer are more likely to have cancer. 

"100 per cent of people with cancer are more than likely to have cancer,” explained the study’s author Jane Hockley. “This contrasts with the rest of the population, who do not have cancer.” The study included 200 participants, half of whom had cancer and half of whom did not.

*since the time of going to Press, Muse and Abuse is sad to report the death of local resident James Fisher, who died after tripping into a busy roadway. Cancer is suspected to have played a role.

Racist whites accidentally go into hiding

Hundreds of terrified white people accidentally ran into their panic rooms this afternoon, after a link on social media site Twitter announced that Nelson Mandela had died.

The totally legitimate news site, which isn't owned by some Los Angeles-based writing workshop and obviously has an outstanding history of ground-breaking reportage, broke a story this morning that the world-renowned icon had died last night.

This is the, like, fourth time in recent memory.

"We were already a third of a way through our first can of stockpiled Oom Tony's baked beans when our friend tweeted at us that it was just a media scare hoax," said 56-year-old ex-NP member Johannes van Der Merwestuysen.

Officials of the right-wing extreme have, however, told its sheep followers not to dismiss the notion."This was just a practice run. Keep those panic buttons handy," said Ewjean Tirblanch, leader of a party that holds these beliefs.

However, some biological, political and religious analysts have suggested that perhaps the report was true.

"What if he really DID die and is now still alive? The implications are massive..." said Jake Manders, a professor of something at some university somewhere. "He might be a vampire."

However, ANC officials (who took time off their busy schedules waving the "remember Mandela and vote for us again as if the two are related" flag) have been quick to debunk these rumours.

"Mandela is still very much alive. We just aren't going to show him to cameras or have a press release unless it directly benefits our political agenda in some way," said spokesperson Moore Bidity.

In spite of this, many conspiracy theories still prevail.

"They are using him! They are sucking the blood and warmth and money from this country - imagine if they get his DNA and use it? We'll be dealing with super-vampires! [rest of comment censored due to the hateful nature of its bigoted, racist content]" said news24 commenter a conscientious, experienced political analyst.

However, in light of all this, South Africans have had to deal with the idea that Mandela could, at any moment, die. 

"It's a horrible thought," said television news editor Vuyo Ristic. "What we are focusing on right now is exercising our Constitutionally-enshrined right to access of information and freedom of speech to get a camera in his room. Hopefully we won't be too late - imagine if we can't catch the big moment on full 1080p High Defintion TV?" 

Hundreds of other editors across the country are also worried.

"We've had these stacks of M-day obituaries, histories, timelines, interviews, profiles and features pieces stacking up since he first coughed loudly seven years ago," said Pippin Tom. 

Even political leaders have voiced their worries.

"He's kind of the last visible link to the struggle," said ANC campaign organiser Fan Tomvhotes. "People might get shocked into realising the truth of modern SA."

Even the DA aired their thoughts.

"zOMG WE WERE  A PART OF THE STRUGGLE TOO WE WERE THERE WITH BIKO AND MADIBA FORM THE BEGINING RAGERAGEERAGE VOTE FOR US THIS TIME #knowyourDA" they said in a Tweet, which you can't fling poop at.

Following the brief controversy, hundreds of newspapers, twitter feeds, and news organisations reported that the family would like the media to respect their wishes and keep their distance from the family.