What a terrible week in the lives of some magazine publishers. At least Media24 came clean about the irregularities in their circulation figures. We were there to cover their Cape Town press conference with Bizcommunity and the tension in the room was incredibly uncomfortable.

But imagine how uncomfortable this shocking series of events has made other publishing companies out there? The ones who haven’t been audited … yet. And imagine how exponentially more uncomfortable similar culprits inside those companies are becoming right now, hoping that their actions won’t be uncovered in a blitz of forensic digging. Not great.

We also interviewed the two key figures at the conference: Hein Brand (Group MD of Media24) and Steven Powell (head of ENS Forensics), who both elaborated on the events surrounding the discovery of incorrect circulation numbers.