By trying to interdict Media24 from naming them as members of the so-called "Alex Mafia", two of Deputy President Paul Mashatile’s oldest friends had ensured they’d receive the media attention they were trying so hard to suppress, Media24’s advocate has argued.
"They [Bridgman Sithole and Mike Maile] should have expected that the effort by them to gag the country’s largest media outlet would generate media attention. Not only on their court effort … but on what it was that they were trying to suppress through their court effort," advocate Max du Plessis SC, argued in the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
He argued that this was an example of the so-called "Streisand effect", named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand’s ill-fated efforts to suppress a photograph of her cliff-top mansion in Malibu which inadvertently resulted in it receiving exponentially more attention than the original picture had.