John Matisonn
John Matisonn is a South African political journalist and author. He was one of the founding councillors of South Africa's Independent Broadcasting Authority and from 1986 to 1991 was the South Africa correspondent for National Public Radio in the United States.[1][2]
Matisonn grew up in the suburbs in Johannesburg and began his career as a political journalist on the Rand Daily Mail.[3] In 1979, when South Africa was under the Apartheid regime, he was sentenced to two weeks in jail for refusing to reveal his sources for an article which led to exposure of the Muldergate Scandal. Matisonn, who was 31 at the time, was given a presidential pardon by President P W Botha on the day he was to fly back from Washington to South Africa to serve his sentence. It was a time of delicate diplomacy between Botha and the new government of President Ronald Reagan, and Botha needed to get this case out of the news. He resigned as president of the Southern African Society of Journalists and left for the United States where he became the Washington correspondent for six South African newspapers.[4]
in 1991 Matisonn and Ira Glass host of This American Life were jointly awarded by the National Association of Black Journalists for their four-part series comparing race relations in South Africa with those in the United States.[5]
References
- ^ Horwitz, Robert B. (2001). Communication and Democratic Reform in South Africa, p. 147. Cambridge University Press
- ^ National Public Radio (25 April 1994). "South African journalist Matisonn"
- ^ News24 (21 August 2013). "Who's who on day two of the SABC board interviews"
- ^ Klein, Dianne (28 April 1981). "John Matisonn, a South African journalist sentenced to jail". UPI
- ^ "Ira Glass — KCRW". www.kcrw.com. Retrieved 2015-10-01.
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