So, not only do UK newspapers hack cell phones, they also ride roughshod over embargos. The Human Rights Watch report “South Africa: Farmworkers’ Dismal, Dangerous Lives” on alleged slave labour conditions on SA wine farms that I saw came with the rider:
“Embargoed for Release
Not for Publication Until
07:30 GMT, Tuesday, August 23, 2011
09:30 in Cape Town, Tuesday August 23, 2011” from Eleanor Blatchley, a “communications and advocates associate” at HRW.

Yet the shouty Telegraph scoop, which lifted liberally from the HRW report, is date-lined 9:30pm the previous day. Does it matter? Well counter arguments were thrown into disarray as industry bodies like WOSA thought they had more time to react to the report before it appeared. One sided, embargo busting, sounds like the National Party’s Department of Information in the Old SA.