TRUTH, HONESTY AND SWAZI NEWSPAPERS

The case of the Swaziland journalist dropped by the Times Sunday after writing homophobic comments in his column draws attention to the need for newspapers to be honest with their readers.

Some people are saying that the case of Qalakaliboli Dlamini touches on his right to freedom of expression. Even the editor of the Times Sunday Innocent Maphalala said as much as he issued an apology for publishing Qalakaliboli’s article after an ‘unprecedented’ number of complaints. 

But, with Qalakaliboli, the issue is not about free speech, it is about honest writing and telling the truth to readers. Qalakaliboli was neither honest nor truthful.

Qalakaliboli wrote 1,500 words attacking homosexuals, using offensive language and proudly boasting that he was ‘homophobic’. He used examples from the world around him in support of his case. But, the examples were misleading at best and false at worst.

In support of his view that homosexuals are despised in Africa, he wrote that the Anglican Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu, was to speak at a symposium in the Catholic University of America. He said, students at the university ‘ran riot’ and made it known that they did not want Tutu at the university because of his support for gays.  In fact there was no riot, but there was a petition signed by 784 people against the visit. But, 16 times as many people (12,192) signed a counter petition in favour of Tutu. 

So, the vast majority of people signing petitions at the Catholic University were very willing to listen to Tutu.

Qalakaliboli also wrote, ‘So, the proponents of multiparty and democracy should not tell us the nonsense that we should accommodate homosexuals because even in democratic country’s such as America, homosexuality is still taboo to most.’

‘Taboo’ means something banned by society as unacceptable and that is obviously not the case with homosexuality in America or developed countries.

Perhaps, Qalakaliboli meant to say that Americans ‘disapprove’ of homosexuality. But the facts do not support even this. In this month (May 2012) alone a number of opinion polls in the US show that the majority of Americans support same-sex marriage. Any number of polls conducted for many years past show Americans also support equal rights for gays and lesbians in public policy areas such as employment, education, housing and health. Most Americans do not disapprove of homosexuals. Qalakaliboli was misleading his readers to say otherwise. 

But, the most blatant misdirection of readers was the entire premise for the article. Qalakaliboli told his readers that a new report ‘states that gay sex is on the increase in Swaziland’. He said that the report found 324 gay men and he ‘got the shock of my life’, when he read this.

The report he refers to, the Swaziland Country Report on Monitoring the Political on HIV AIDS, is not about gay sex. Nowhere in the whole report does the word ‘homosexual’, ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ occur. Qalakaliboli needed to go through the report with a fine-tooth comb even to find reference to his 324 men.

This he clearly did with relish in order to falsely suggest that homosexuality might go ‘viral’ in Swaziland.

The report is actually a very sober account on HIV and AIDS in Swaziland. The 324 men Qalakaliboli despises so much take up four paragraphs of a report covering 91 pages. The 324 men are ‘men who have sex with men’, which Qalakaliboli did not tell his readers does not necessarily make them ‘gay’.

The report makes it clear that this is the first time such information has been collected, so Qalakaliboli is wrong when he writes the report shows ‘gay sex is on the increase in Swaziland’.

So why should we care that Qalakaliboli is deliberately misleading his readers? The simple answer is that journalists are expected by their readers to tell them the truth. A certain trust needs to be established between newspapers and readers, so readers can feel that they are not being manipulated. This is especially important in Swaziland where ordinary people have limited access to alternative sources of information.

Qalakaliboli and the Times Sunday broke this trust.

The Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ) recognises the importance of trust. Article 1 of its code of ethical conduct states, ‘The duty of every journalist is to write and report, adhere to and faithfully defend, the truth. A journalist should make adequate inquiries, do cross-checking of facts in order to provide the public with unbiased, accurate, balanced and comprehensive information. The public must have unfettered access to all media.’

This discussion is not about Qalakaliboli's attitudes to homosexuality alone: he has form when it comes to telling his readers falsehoods. One, of many examples, was when discussing whether a husband had the legal right to rape his wife. He said, ‘The British law makes it clear that there can never be marital rape in a marriage unless both parties are separated or the court has issued an order forbidding the husband from touching his wife.’ This is not true. Courts in England have ruled a husband cannot force his wife to have sex since at least 1991. 

In the past many Times Sunday readers complained to the newspaper and corrected him on a number of articles. Some of these complaints were published by the Times either online or in the printed newspaper, so Times' editors knew Qalakaliboli was unreliable with the truth.

In his apology to readers published last week the Times Sunday editor Innocent Maphalala said he took ‘full responsibility for publication’ of Qalakaliboli’s article. And so he should, but why did he let the article go in the paper in the first place? His comments on gays were clearly in contravention of Article 13 (hate speech) of the SNAJ code and there were significant doubts from the past about Qalakaliboli’s ability to write truthfully.

Following his suspension from the newspaper, Qalakaliboli sent an email to his editors confirming his hatred of homosexuals and stating that he would be prepared to launch an anti-homosexual campaign in Swaziland.

Qalakaliboli cannot claim he has been denied his right to freedom of expression, now he has been dropped. His case is not about the right to hold opinion, it is about deliberately lying to readers to advance his own agenda. 

Some readers are expressing relief that Qalakaliboli will no longer be allowed to write for the Times Sunday, but dropping his column does not remove the responsibility of the newspaper to ensure that all its writers are truthful.

Now, it is up to the editors at the Times to ensure in future they monitor the work of their journalists more thoroughly so readers can feel confident they are not being manipulated by them to advance their own purposes.

See also

GAY HATE JOURNALIST UNREPENTANT

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/05/gay-hate-journalist-unrepentant.html

‘TIMES’ GAY HATE – CALL TO OMBUDSMAN

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/05/times-gay-hate-call-to-ombudsman.html

NEW ATTACK ON ‘TIMES’ HATE SPEECH

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/05/new-attack-on-times-hate-speech.html

MYTH OF RICH SWAZI NURSES

Nurses in Swaziland who are packing their bags ready to travel to the UK for jobs paying as much as E1,800 (260 US dollars) per hour should hold on to their suitcases.

The Times of Swaziland under the headline Swazi nurses strike it rich in Britain reported yesterday (Tuesday 5 February 2008) that nurses from the kingdom were able to earn E14,400 (about 2,000 US dollars) for an eight hour day and about E288,000 (about 41,000 US dollars) for 20 days worked in a month. This, the Times reported, was 40 times more than local UK nurses were being paid.

It seems too good to be true doesn’t it? That’s because it is.

I smelt a rat when I saw that the news report was sourced from the UK’s biggest selling newspaper, The Sun. The Sun is a tabloid newspaper that only has a passing acquaintance with the truth.

The Times relied heavily on the Sun report which is available on the internet here.

The Sun distorted the figures for the salaries by making it look like one abnormal payment to one nurse was the typical payment for all nurses. The salaries were for nurses who did temporary hourly-paid work through employment agencies.

The news agency Press Association (PA) gave a fuller picture of nurses’ salaries. The PA reported that more typical salary for nurses was up to E465 (about 65 US dollars) per hour. A third of this salary would go to the agency employing the nurse.

The Times made it look as though these salaries were being earned by nurses from Swaziland, but nowhere in the original reports from the UK was Swaziland mentioned.

I guess the Times just assumed that if these salaries were on offer in the UK, then Swazi nurses would be able to get them. The Times could just as easily have said ‘Nigerian nurses strike it rich in Britain’.

Occasionally journalists in Swaziland pick up reports from news organizations abroad and print them in their own newspapers. There is nothing really wrong about this as long as the journalists give the source of their information. But journalists need to be more sceptical about the reports they read.

In the case of the nurses, the Times should have wondered why it was that agency nurses were being paid ‘40 times’ more than local UK nurses. A little bit of further investigation would have proved the original Sun report to be a huge exaggeration.

And what about these Swazi nurses? No news organisation in the UK said that Swazi nurses were getting these high salaries. We can’t even be sure that anyone from Swaziland is receiving the E465 an hour. That was a fabrication made up by the Times.

Let the Times prove me wrong and produce a Swazi nurse who has earned E288,000 for 20 days work.

ACCURACY: DEAD MAN WALKS

There was a bumper crop of apologies for mistakes made published in the Times of Swaziland yesterday (31 October 2007)

In the worst of their mistakes they killed off former Minister of Public Works and Transport, Titus Mlangeni.

As Mark Twain once said, ‘Reports of my death have been exaggerated.’ It was in fact Mlangeni’s wife who had recently passed away.

In another apology the Times gave the wrong name for the recently deceased former Speaker of the House of Assembly. They called him Dlamini when he was in fact a Nsibande.

The ‘newspaper’ scored a hat trick of apologies with this correction, ‘It has been brought to our attention that the article under the heading ‘PM given a week to table report in Parliament’ was incorrect. The MPs voted on the issue and the motion was thrown out.’

I applaud the Times' honesty for apologising for these errors, but the mistakes should not have happened in the first place. All three are the most basic types of errors a reporter can make: getting a name wrong, getting the result of a vote wrong … and killing off a perfectly healthy man.

The result of all this must surely be that readers cannot trust what they see in the Times. How can we know that even the most basic of information published in the newspaper is accurate?

This isn’t the first time the Times has got it wrong and the Times is not the only newspaper to publish inaccurate stories. Who can forget the grovelling apology the Times Sunday had to make after it incorrectly reported 20,000 people died while being treated as patients at Mbabane Government Hospital in 2006?


Then there was the time the Swazi Observer had to apologise to the principal of Waterford Kamhlaba private school for reporting incorrectly that pupils had been hospitalised after taking illegal drugs.

Article one of the Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ) Code of Ethics states that the duty of every journalist is to write and report, adhere to and faithfully defend the truth. It goes on to state that a journalist should make adequate inquiries, do cross checking of facts in order to provide the public with unbiased, accurate, balanced and comprehensive information.

Getting things right is important because readers must feel that they can trust their newspapers (or other news media). The main way they do this by having confidence that the reports and articles in the newspapers are accurate. Large numbers of people read and trust newspapers. The SNAJ Code of Ethics recognises that journalists have a duty not to mislead the public.

There have been many academic studies into the relationship between media accuracy and credibility. Put simply, the more errors there are in an article, the less credible is the news story. Errors not only diminished respect for the newspaper but also tarnish the media’s working relationships with the sources relied upon for information. If sources of news cannot trust the newspaper to get it right, they are unlikely to willingly work with that newspaper in the future.

Editors of newspapers should make sure that reporters check their facts and do not make mistakes. One newspaper, the Sunday Times in Johannesburg, has a checklist that reporters and editors are asked to complete for each report. The checklist covers a number of areas, including basic information such as the names and ages etc., of people included in the report. It also includes questions about fairness, such as whether all people parties involved in the story have been contacted.

The checklist can be seen here

SWAZI JOURNALISTS CAN’T ADD UP

A row over the murder rate in Swaziland has exposed shortcomings in Swazi journalism – and also in the Swazi Government.

S’gayoyo Magongo, the Minister of Public Service and Information, publicly attacked overseas’ journalists at a press conference on Thursday about the number of murders that are committed in Swaziland.

The internationally respected Economist group of magazines had published statistics in its publication Pocket World in Figures that said Swaziland had the second highest number of murders in the whole world.

The Economist report was picked up by the Times Sunday and this is what brought it to the Minister’s attention. The Economist had reported that there were 13.6 murders per 100,000 head of population in Swaziland.

On Friday (21 September 2007) both the Swazi Observer and the Times of Swaziland reported S’gayoyo ‘slamming’ and ‘rubbishing’ the report. S’gayoyo said that the Economist got it wrong.

S’gayoyo scoffed at a press conference that this would mean that something like 155,856 Swazis would have been murdered in a year, an incredible figure considering that there are only 1.1 million people living in the whole of Swaziland.

The figures would be alarming indeed, if that is what the Economist said. In fact the Economist said there were 13.6 murders per 100,000 people in Swaziland. When you extend that ratio to the whole 1.1 million Swaziland population the total number of murders comes to about 150 a year. This figure is roughly the same number of murders that have been reported by the Royal Swazi Police in its annual reports, demonstrating that the Economist got it about right.

The Times Sunday got the figures wrong. And so did S’gayoyo. He told the press conference that ‘the Government’ had checked the original source of the information (so we must assume that ‘the Government’ – whoever that is – made the same mistake as the Times Sunday journalist).

What they both did was to read 13.6 per 100,000 as 13.6 per cent of 100,000. This enabled them to arrive at the figure of 155,856. The mistake should be obvious. Trying to calculate the murder rate in the whole 1.1 million population as 13.6 per cent of 100,000 simply makes no sense.

So the minister made a basic statistical error. But how come both the Times and the Observer didn’t point out the mistake to him, but instead printed it?

There are two parts to the answer, I think. The first is that S’gayoyo is a minister and journalists in Swaziland don’t, as a habit, correct ministers (even when, as in this case, he was so clearly wrong). The second part to the answer is that the Times and Observer journalists themselves probably didn’t understand the statistic either. You only need to read the business pages of both the daily newspapers to see reports written in such a way that it is clear that the journalists don’t understand figures.

S’gayoyo’s error is embarrassing for him, because he told the press conference that ‘the Government’ had checked the original report on the Internet, so the misinterpretation of the Economist report must be seen as his own responsibility.

He then used the Economist ‘error’ as an excuse to attack the international media for misreporting Swaziland.

The Times reported S’gayoyo saying, ‘On behalf of the Government of the Kingdom of Swaziland, the Ministry of Public Services and Information wishes to caution about the ramifications of one-sided, biased and non-factual journalistic practices.'

He went on, ‘Inaccurate, one-sided, negative reports give an unattractive perception of the country and may fan away foreign direct investment and tourism.’

The original mistake was obvious to people outside of Swazi journalism and Swazi government and it was quickly spotted and yesterday (23 September 2007) the Times Sunday fell over itself to correct the mistake.

So to recap: the Times Sunday journalists, the Minister of Public Service and Information and ‘the Government’ all failed their stats exam. And as for the reporting of the Economist’s role in all this, it wasn’t the international journalists who were ‘inaccurate’ and ‘one-sided’ and ‘non-factual’. It was the Times Sunday and Minister S’gayoyo himself.

So, one small lack of understanding of a statistic has exposed failings in Swazi journalism, the Swazi ‘Government’ and the Minister of Public Service and Information. Not bad for one morning’s work.

QUOTING CORRECTLY

What do these two quotes have in common?

‘Right now it can affect me, but that is indirect. It will never directly affect me because I do not want it that way. I will never have HIV in my body because I chose so.’


‘I know that HIV can affect me indirectly, but I will never have HIV in my body.’



They were said by the same person at the same time in the same place. But the two journalists who covered the story produced different versions of what was said for their newspapers. The first was published in the Weekend Observer (15 September 2007) and the second in the Times of Swaziland (13 September 2007).

The event was a public speech on HIV/AIDS given by the Swaziland Deputy Minister of Regional Development and Youth Affairs, Hlobsile Ndlovu at the annual Peace Corps youth conference on 12 September 2007.

So how was it that the two different versions came to be published? The answer, of course, is that someone got it wrong. I don’t know, because I wasn’t there, but maybe one reporter got it right and the other one didn’t. Or maybe they both got it wrong.

The issue of how to quote quotes correctly isn’t a new one. And it certainly isn’t one that is confined to Swaziland newspapers.

Seasoned journalists who are otherwise honest and trustworthy alter quotes all the time. They shouldn’t do it but they do. If you went to a newsroom and asked reporters why they do it, I suspect they would tell you something like this: they don’t want to make the people they are reporting on look silly because they speak in badly constructed sentences with poor grammar. Reporters might also say that sometimes they write what the interviewee meant to say rather than what they actually did say, thereby tidying up a slip of the tongue.

Bob Steele, of the US-based media watchdog organisation Poynter, has written about his own experiences of being quoted by journalists.

‘On occasion, I see a quote attributed to me that I’m pretty darned sure doesn’t match what I said. ’Sometimes my quote has proper grammar when I know I butchered the verb tense in the interview. The reporter cleaned me up.

‘Sometimes there’s a word in my quote that I wouldn’t use because I don’t even know its meaning. The reporter either wasn’t listening well or took bad notes. ’Sometimes my “quote” is a composite of several things I said at different times in the interview. The words may be accurate but the reporter is playing loose with the context, perhaps the writer’s way of tidying up my thoughts to tighten up the story.

'I’m in the camp that believes, “Quotes should accurately and authentically reflect the words used in an interview. If we start changing words inside quote marks, then we raise questions about all other quotes. We will increase the distrust factor about the veracity of our journalism.”’

The Washington Post, in the United States, which is probably one of the most respected newspapers in the world, has a very simple rule when it comes to quotes. Deborah Howell, the newspapers ombudsman (the person who deals with readers’ complaints) says, the Washington Post's policy couldn't be clearer: ‘When we put a source's words inside quotation marks, those exact words should have been uttered in precisely that form.’

I have written before about the need for newspapers to be accurate in their reporting and this need should extend to the accurate use of quotes.

Getting things right is important because readers must feel that they can trust their newspapers (or other news media) and the main way they do this by having confidence that the reports and articles in the newspapers are accurate.

If you look at the number of errors that generally appear in newspapers in Swaziland it is not unreasonable to suspect that the real reason why quotes are incorrectly reported is that reporters are not very good at taking down notes accurately and have no skills in shorthand note taking.

Many reporters at the Times of Swaziland get around this problem by not using direct quotes at all. That’s certainly one way to make sure you don’t misquote people, but it tends to mean that their reports in the newspaper are lifeless. So, not quoting at all is not the best solution. Journalism is a craft and if people are to call themselves journalists they need to learn the craft skills and one of the most important for reporters is note taking.

My tip: If you don’t have the chance to learn shorthand skills at least take a tape recorder with you when you go out on a job.

BIASED REPORTING OF REED DANCE

This year’s annual Swazi Reed Dance (Umhlanga) takes place this coming weekend (2-3 September 2007) and the Swazi media have gone into overdrive to cover the preparations.

The annual ceremony at which women from all over the kingdom dance half naked in front of the king is controversial, not least because of the way women generally are treated in Swaziland. Swazi culture dictates that women are ‘minors’ with no legal rights and who are effectively ‘owned’ by their menfolk (usually fathers and husbands).

There is also the expectation (often not met) each year that the king will choose one of the maidens to be his next wife.

Yesterday’s newspapers had reports of ‘maidens’ (mostly young women) signing up to take part. Depending on the newspaper you read there were 50,000 or 55,000 people registered.

The controversial nature of the event means that news media need to be cautious in their reports. The Swazi Observer showed no caution in this report published yesterday (29 August 2007).

The report headlined, ‘Swazi maidens celebrate virginity’ had the following opening paragraphs:

‘This year’s Umhlanga (Reed dance) ceremony commenced yesterday for thousands of proud Swazi maidens to celebrate their virginity.

‘Those who doubt themselves will hide their bodies and shy away from the traditional event.

‘Others, who will boycott the event, are those that have been polluted by perverted teachings of foreign preachers, who have made sure that Swazi culture and traditions are undermined while their pockets are bulging with money collected as tithes from gullible Swazis.

‘Luckily, God has been on the Swazi side and not much has been achieved to turn people away from their culture.

‘This year will be no different as the best of Swazi colour will be there for display for nations of the world to watch and cherish. The Reed dance has been described by many observers as the most colourful cultural event in the world.’

The report then goes on in similar fashion for many more paragraphs.

In case you are in doubt this report appeared on a page of National News, and not as an opinion column.

If you take the report at face value you are led to believe that the ceremony is uncontroversial, that every woman in Swaziland wants to take part and only those who are not virgins or who have been brainwashed will stay way. According to the report, women who have been ‘polluted’ by ‘foreign preachers’ will not attend the ceremony.

The news report is not a ‘news report’ at all. If you take a very basic definition of ‘news’, news must be about something that is currently happening (which this report is) and it needs to be based on facts and also have some kind of balance when matters of controversy are involved. The report fails in both of these last tests.

Article one of the Swaziland National Association of Journalists Code of Conduct states that a journalist should provide the public with unbiased, accurate, balanced and comprehensive information. This report fails article one comprehensively.

The ‘Swazi maidens celebrate virginity’ report fails the news test, but any regular reader of the Swazi Observer would not be too surprised that it is biased in its reporting. The Observer supports ‘traditional’ culture in Swaziland and is after all owned by a company that is in turn effectively controlled by the Swazi Royal Family.

The Observer is also big on fundamentalist Christianity and enjoys moralising, as this paragraph from the report testifies,

‘Taking part in the Reed dance is the pride of each and every well-meaning
Swazi maiden, who prides herself on keeping her body pure from earthly
contamination like early sex and outright promiscuity.’

We have many more days of media coverage of the Reed Dance to look forward to but let’s hope that the standard of reporting gets better.

To help the Observer a little: there are a number of ‘rules’ about news reporting that journalism students or professional journalists who are just starting out learn from day one. Among them are that in a news story you should:

- Stick to the facts.
- Do not give your own opinion.
- Keep the report simple and avoid adjectives.
- Act as an observer to the event, not as an advocate.
- Do not get too close to the story.


I hope that is of some assistance.

SELF-CRITICAL SWAZI JOURNALISTS

The media in Swaziland are unprofessional and irrelevant to the people of the kingdom. Some journalists willingly work as propagandists for the state. Journalists can hardly write an intelligible sentence and the media houses are making little or no effort to improve standards. The news media lack credibility and many people see journalists as lacking in education and experience.

Anyone who reads newspapers or listens to radio or watches television in Swaziland might agree with some or all of the above. What makes the comments so important is the fact that the people making the criticisms are Swazi media professionals themselves.

This is Vusi Sibisi, a columnist with the Times of Swaziland, writing about the print media,

‘Content is invariably compromised by a lack of professionalism in the sourcing, writing, editing and positioning of news articles in the newspapers to the extent of weakening their retainer value. Interesting news stories are watered down by the incomprehensible way they are written, leaving the reader confused and bewildered’

Sibisi is one of Swaziland’s media professionals who contributed to a special edition of the newsletter Khulumani, published by the Swaziland chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa.

Bheki Makhubu, editor of the Nation magazine, another of the contributors, believes one of the biggest concerns about the media is the quality of news that makes it to the news pages.

‘Sex and murder have become the only events that make the front pages in the newspapers today.

‘Issues of national importance like the Constitution and the rampant corruption in government are rarely, if ever, reported on. News analysis no longer exists even though the Observer has more columnists today than at any other time in its history.'

There is no longer investigative journalism in Swaziland because there is too much fear in newsrooms with journalists intimidated and threatened into submission. Michael Motsa, of the Media Institute for Southern Africa, says because the media have become so docile and timid public officials have grown arrogant and are doing as they please because they are no longer afraid of the press.

This view is supported by Bheki Makhubu. ‘Today, public officials have absolutely no fear of the media. Arrogance has set in among public officers and politicians who bully the media practitioners into toeing their line while corruption and many wrongs go unchecked in this country where any form of opposition to our politics is still not allowed.’

Editors in Swaziland work under enormous pressures, some of these pressures come from within their own media houses and others from outside.

Ackel Zwane, news editor of the Swazi Observer, says, ‘Pressure mounts on the average editor from advertisers and administrators who have a different mandate from that of journalism.’

Zwane acknowledges that some editors suppress certain stories because they do not support the points of view being expressed.

Vusi Sibisi reveals that government in Swaziland uses a subtle policy of assimilation through which it rewards those journalists who toe the line with political positions or as ministerial private secretaries. This has engendered a culture of self-censorship from the cub reporter to the editor.

Some journalists willingly work as propagandists, especially at the government-controlled SBIS radio. Sibisi says journalists see their role as propagandists of the government of the day.

Listeners believe SBIS radio is used as a weapon for the government to attack its adversaries.

Sibisi says, ‘Some of the radio journalists have appropriated to themselves the prerogative to decide who is and who is not an enemy of the state and the government. Thus they have made themselves the attack dogs whenever someone criticises government.’

The whole profession of journalism is in disarray. People with talent leave jobs in media houses because of bad salaries, lack of career structures and poor on-the-job training.

Swazi journalist Bongiwe Zwane says, ‘Lack of employment has forced people into careers they would never have chosen – that is the reason the newsrooms have people who do not want to be there. Being forced by circumstances into a job shines through in the way one does the job. It is usually without zeal or passion.’

Editors lack a pool of trained reporters in their newspapers. Zwane says, ‘the stories that get to their desks most of the time are poorly written, not balanced and often “not news”. This is primarily because most of them are school leavers who have not had the training.’

There is a more general concern with what Swazi professionals like to call the ‘juniorization’ of their industry. The exodus of the best qualified and experienced personnel has led to this ‘juniorization’ of newsrooms whereby the less good young and inexperienced journalists, often untrained and seriously lacking in skills and competence, are left to staff the newsrooms and occupy high editorial positions.

Junior editors have no nose for news and concentrate on petty things while ignoring the problems faced by society.

Lunga Masuku, publisher of Youth Connexion magazine, sees something more sinister in the ‘juniorisaztion’ process. Media owners promote junior reporters into the position of token editor so that the owner can control more easily what goes into the newspaper.

‘This is sometimes caused by the fear that the media owner has towards the senior journalist who will at most tell the publisher where to get off. After all, the senior is a professional in the field and does not need advice from the publisher.

‘In order to keep the profession at exploitable levels publishers have made sure that these inexperienced editors have all the rights under the sun. Some can go to the extent of firing journalists without consulting publishers.’

Masuku goes on, ‘Most of the junior editors surround themselves with lapdog reporters who can hardly write a story and the only survive on handouts in the form of press releases’.

The media houses make no effort to improve the skills of staff as the president of the Swaziland National Association of Journalists, Alec Lushaba, says, ‘Even in this day and age, anybody can still walk into the newsroom and claim to be a journalist’.

Once on the staff in media houses, scarce resources make it difficult for journalists to gain insight and to specialise in specific areas of journalism. There is a lack of continuous in-house and further training, and lack of transparency on upward mobility opportunities and security of tenure in the journalism industry.

All of the above comments were published in 2005, but it is difficult to see much improvement in standards of journalism in the past two years. Only this past Saturday (18 August 2007) both the Weekend Observer and the Swazi News reported comments made by Swazi Television chief executive Vukani Maziya who criticised the Swazi Observer newspaper.

Maziya was upset that the Observer had reported that equipment worth E16 million (1.1 million British pounds, 2.2 million US dollars) owned by the television station had been destroyed in a fire. Maziya said this was not true. He said no one from the Observer had contacted him before publication.

The Weekend Observer reported that Maziya made his comments at a meeting to launch Kusile, the station’s new breakfast time programme. It reported Maziya saying that there was a high probability that many people did not believe stories written by the Observer because reporters at the newspaper did not bother to check their facts.

Media professionals also came under attack at the same meeting from the Minister of Public Service and Information, S’gayoyo Magongo. He criticized Swazi TV staff members who arrived at least 30 minutes late for the meeting. ‘It is even worse when the people that come in late are the ones hosting the event,’ the Weekend Observer reported him saying.

TRIAL BY NEWSPAPER

An unsavoury case of ‘trial by newspaper’ has been unfolding in the Swazi Observer this week.

It began on Tuesday (14 August 2007) with a report of a man from Manzini who says he was shot at by police while driving his car late on Sunday night. The Observer quotes the man saying that he was almost forced off the road by a police car.

Not knowing for sure that the people in the car were police officers, the man drove away at speed. There was then a car chase in which the police were said to have fired bullets at the man’s car.

The man managed to escape the police and eventually he went home where he discovered that some of the bullets fired by the police had hit his car. The man told the Observer that he later reported the incident to the police, but the police denied any knowledge of the matter.

At this point we have a speculative news report that mostly rests on the testimony of the man. A reporter and a photographer were able to interview the man and take a picture of what appears to be a bullet hole in the car. The police were asked for their side of the story but were unable to confirm the man’s story.

At this point it appears to be a legitimate news report. But next day, the Observer took the incident in an entirely new direction.

In a report headed ‘Readers react to businessman story’, the Observer (15 August 2007) says it was ‘inundated with mixed responses’ to the story and that readers were ‘particularly divided on the alleged car chase’.

It is noticeable that the original report as published took the story from the man as fact. By the next day in its report it had become an ‘alleged’ chase.

The report then goes on to state, ‘Most readers felt they were not convinced by the reasons offered by the businessman as to why he did not stop when he realised he was being followed by the police.’

At this point in the story the honesty of the driver is being doubted. The problem here, of course, is that readers are in no position to judge one way or another on the incident. They were not witnesses to the incident and have no personal knowledge to draw on. All they have is what was written in the newspapers and as I have argued before the accuracy of the Swazi news media cannot be trusted.

Even though the readers cannot be judges in this case, that does not stop the Observer promising that it will be publishing a collection of comments from its readers the following day (Thursday).

But by Thursday (16 August 2007) events had taken a new turn. The man had been arrested and charged by police for a series of traffic offences. The Observer reported he had been taken to court and released on E1,000 bail. Even though a court case was now pending the Observer repeated many of the comments from readers it had published the previous day.

Then illogically, it ran a note saying that it could no longer publish the new comments from readers as it had intended ‘because the matter is now before the court.’

So to recap: over three days the Observer published a story based on a driver who says he was chased and shot at by police. It then published comments from readers who did not believe the man’s story (even though readers had no way of knowing one way or the other what the truth might be). Finally, the newspaper reported that the man had been charged with motoring offences and appeared in court.

Throughout this reporting the Observer had shown complete disregard for the rights of the driver. It was unfair coverage because it chose to doubt the truth of the man’s story. It did this, not by sending a reporter to interview and question him closely about his story, but instead by publishing comments from readers. Finally, even after the man had appeared in court it repeated some of the comments made by readers doubting the truth of the man’s story.

The Observer has stopped being a newspaper that reports on facts; instead it has become the carrier of gossip. It is in effect encouraging its readers to gossip about the incident and to give unfounded opinions. This is in much the same way that we might gossip about someone we know when we are with our friends in the pub or coffee shop.

By encouraging and printing this gossip, the Observer has damaged the reputation of the man. It has done this by careless and unfair reporting. It has put the man on trial and found him guilty. For its own reasons, the Observer chose to encourage readers to judge the truthfulness of his story, even though the readers had no way of knowing what the truth of the matter could be. By concentrating on the readers’ doubts the Observer has found the man guilty of lying. That is the job of the courts, not the media, and that is why this is a case of ‘trial by newspaper’.

INACCURACY: SOURCES SPEAK OUT

A row between a school in Mbabane and the Swazi Observer gives us an interesting insight into the accuracy of news reporting in the kingdom.

The Observer published a front-page story (9 August 2007) in which it claimed that four senior boys at Waterford Kamhlaba private school had been hospitalised after taking illicit drugs.

The following day in a humiliating climb down the newspaper published a ‘right to reply’ from the school’s principal.

In the reply, the principal identified four main areas of error in the original news report. The Observer admitted that the news report had misquoted him and had taken information and quotes from another source but attributed them to the principal. It also admitted that it had confused quotes from students and made them sound as if they came from an official school spokesman. It also turned out that the students had not taken illicit drugs but had drunk tea made with the flowers of the moonflower plant and had become sick, unaware of the poisonous nature of the plant.

As I have written before it is important for journalists to be accurate in their reporting because readers must feel they can trust what’s in the newspaper. In this case the principal’s confidence in the Observer is now so low that he has stated that he will not speak to the paper’s reporters in future. At best, he will make comments to the newspaper in writing only, so that his words are not distorted.

What we as readers cannot know is how often gross distortions of information are published in Swazi newspapers. We know about this particular case because the source at its centre is an educated person who knows how to complain to the newspaper’s editor. He complained and his ‘right to reply’ was immediately published. But, how many uneducated and ignorant people get badly reported in newspapers but never know how to complain?

There is some academic research that gives us an insight into how often newspapers make mistakes. Philip Meyer surveyed people who had been used by newspapers in the United States as sources in news stories. Meyer wanted to find out from these news sources how accurate they thought the reports were.

Meyer also asked the sources why they thought errors happened.

The main reason given by sources, when asked to judge why the reporter made a mistake, was simply that the reporter didn’t understand what he or she was writing about.

Here are the top seven reasons for errors and the percentages of sources that named them:

1. Reporters didn’t fully understand the story - 29%.

2. Pressure to get the story done on time - 23%.

3. Not enough research - 16%.

4. Events surrounding the story were very confusing - 15%.

5. Laziness on the part of the news staff - 12%.

6. Reporter didn't ask enough questions - 12%.

7. Reporter didn't ask the right questions - 12%.

In his study, Meyer puts errors in three categories: Objective (misspelled name), Subjective (out of context, exaggerated, sensationalized), Maths (percentages, etc.)

Of the more than 5,100 stories Meyer examined, 21 per cent had an objective error, 18 per cent a maths error and 53 per cent a subjective error. Interestingly, the sources for these stories were more likely to forgive a subjective error, thinking that the reporter was either too dimwitted or too biased to get it right, than a maths error. After all, maths is factual, and if you can’t get the facts right than how can you get the context right?

For more details of this research see Tim Porter’s essay First Draft here

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

Can we believe what we read in the newspapers? Journalists on newspapers (and also radio and television) have a responsibility to put before the public information that is accurate and based on truth. Journalists ask their readers to accept their integrity when writing their news reports.

This trust between journalist and reader breaks down when it is discovered that journalists have failed to produce accurate reports of the events they cover.

There are many examples of this breakdown in the Swazi media, but recently there was a particularly revealing example. The Times Sunday ran a story (and ‘story’ is the right word here as the news report turned out to be complete fiction) concerning an official government report that stated that 20,000 people died while being treated as patients at Mbabane Government Hospital in 2006. It also gave other statistics regarding the number of patients treated in various hospital departments.

The Ministry of Health quickly denied the report published in the Times Sunday of 15 July 2007.

Two weeks later on 29 July 2007 the Times Sunday editor Mbongeni Mbingo was forced to make an abject apology ‘for our own ineptitude’. He then gave a curious account of what had happened. Unintentionally, I think, he revealed the lack of journalistic skills that many journalists in Swaziland possess.

His explanation goes like this. A Times Sunday reporter received a phone call from someone claiming to be working in the minister’s office of the Ministry of Health. The caller said she wanted to expose the true picture of what was going on at the Mbabane Government Hospital ‘for the sake of the people who are suffering and those who continue to.’

The caller went on to tell the reporter that the minister was ‘clueless’. She claimed she would give the reporter an exclusive on a report on the government hospital. The caller made several calls during the following days and revealed the figures that later were published in the newspaper.

Then, just before midnight on the Saturday before the newspaper was on the streets, the caller rang back to say that she had deliberately tricked the reporter and given false information. The caller said she had done this in retaliation for critical news reports that newspapers had been publishing about the health ministry.

In his apology, the editor goes on to claim that the ministry and the minister of health personally have a vendetta against him and his newspaper.

As I write this I have no way of knowing whether there is any truth in the editor’s version of events. How much can we trust his newspaper to tell us the truth?

What I can say is that the reporter and her superiors at the newspaper should have made some effort to get confirmation on the report. The editor himself acknowledges this in his apology.

This incident is embarrassing in itself because it shows the incompetence at the newspaper. The embarrassment is even greater because in the same edition (indeed on the very same page) that the original news report about the hospital appeared there was a lengthy apology regarding a report previously published about a school pupil who had committed suicide after discovering her HIV status.

The apology acknowledged many errors: that the girl’s death was not related to her HIV status; the reporter misidentified the man who spoke at her memorial service; that her mother was called from work on the say the daughter died (the mother was actually not at work that day); and the girl had not bought the weevil tablets she used to kill herself some days previously. It is hard to see from this apology which facts in the report the reporter actually got right.

It is a coincidence that the two examples I use here are from the same newspaper. I doubt very much that the Times Sunday is worse than any of the other news media in Swaziland. As readers it is difficult for us to know when a story contains inaccuracies. Unless we have some personal knowledge of the events being reported we can’t know whether the reporter has got the facts right. Personally, I have seen a number of reports in all the papers where I know that facts are either wrong or are being misrepresented. It is easier to detect inaccuracies on some days when, for example, both the Swazi Observer and Times of Swaziland cover the same event but in their published reports are unable to agree on quite simple matters such as the names, ages, occupations etc. of people involved in the report.

Article one of the Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ) Code of Ethics states that the duty of every journalist is to write and report, adhere to and faithfully defend the truth. It goes on to state that a journalist should make adequate inquiries, do cross checking of facts in order to provide the public with unbiased, accurate, balanced and comprehensive information.

Getting things right is important because readers must feel that they can trust their newspapers (or other news media). The main way they do this by having confidence that the reports and articles in the newspapers are accurate. Large numbers of people read and trust newspapers. The SNAJ Code of Ethics recognises that journalists have a duty not to mislead the public.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which has a worldwide reputation for the accuracy of its journalism, tells its reporters, ‘Our output must be well sourced, based on sound evidence, thoroughly tested and presented in clear, precise language. We should be honest and open about what we don't know and avoid unfounded speculation.’

There have been many academic studies into the relationship between media accuracy and credibility. Put simply, the more errors there are in an article, the less credible is the news story. Errors not only diminished respect for the newspaper but also tarnish the media’s working relationships with the sources relied upon for information. If sources of news cannot trust the newspaper to get it right, they are unlikely to willingly work with that newspaper in the future.

Editors of newspapers should make sure that reporters check their facts and do not make mistakes. One newspaper, the Sunday Times in Johannesburg, has a checklist that reporters and editors are asked to complete for each report. The checklist covers a number of areas, including basic information such as the names and ages etc., of people included in the report. It also includes questions about fairness, such as whether all people parties involved in the story have been contacted.

The checklist can be seen here

SNAJ CODE OF CONDUCT

This Blog will comment on the Swaziland News Media with a particular emphasis on the ethical standards of the kingdom’s journalism. The best way to do this is to use the standards journalists in Swaziland set for themselves and to study how well they adhere to these.

The majority of Swazi journalists and other media practitioners are organised in professionals associations such as The Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ), which has a membership of 150 out of the estimated 200 journalists who are working in the country.

SNAJ itself has published a code of conduct and this provides a framework of reference to all practicing journalists in Swaziland, both full-time and freelance. The code is meant to ensure that members adhere to the highest ethical standards, professional competence and good behaviour in carrying out their duties. Its overriding concern is that members of the media should conduct themselves with a high sense of responsibility without infringing the rights of individuals and society in general.

The Code is divided into 19 Articles, an edited version of which follows:

Art 1: Peoples right to information (The duty of every journalist is to write and report, adhere to and faithfully defend, the truth. A journalist should make adequate inquiries, do cross-checking of facts in order to provide the public with unbiased, accurate, balanced and comprehensive information. The public must have unfettered access to all media).

Art 2: Social responsibility (Including a journalist may advise a survivor of a sexual offence to go for counselling).

Art 3: Professional integrity and conflict of interest (Journalists should not accept bribes and there should be no conflict of interest in the carrying out of the journalists’ duties.

Art 4: Plagiarism is unethical and illegal.

Art 5: Respect for privacy and human dignity (Journalists should respect the right of the individual, privacy and human dignity. Enquiries and intrusions into a person’s private life can only be justified when done in the public interest. A journalist should guard against defamation, libel, slander and obscenity. A journalist shall seek consent of the survivor before taking pictures or conducting interviews with survivors of sexual offences. In cases of minors, the consent of their guardians shall be sufficient. Evidence of the consent may be recorded electronically or documentary.)

Art 6: Respect for national and ethnic values (A journalist shall not originate material which encourages discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, colour, creed, gender or sexual orientation. Journalists should respect ethnic values of Swazi society unless they compromise good moral values or violate human rights.).

Art 7: Confidential sources (Journalists are bound to protect confidential sources of information).

Art 8: Suppression of news (Under no circumstances should news or a publication be suppressed unless it borders on issues of national security).

Art 9: Corrections (Whenever there is an inaccurate or misleading report it should be corrected promptly and given due prominence. An apology should be published whenever appropriate).

Art 10: Rejoinders (A fair opportunity to respond to issues should be given to individuals and organizations).

Art11: Information and pictures (A journalist shall obtain information, photographs and illustrations only by ethical means provided the use of other means can be justified).

Art 12: Separating comment from facts (While free to take positions on any issue, journalists shall draw a clear line between comment, conjecture and fact).

Art 13: Hate speech. (Journalists shall avoid by all means the publication of speech that might promote hatred, spite and conflict amongst the Swazi or any other nation.)

Art 14: Respect embargoes when they exist on stories.

Art 15: Survivors of sexual assault (Journalists shall avoid identifying survivors of sexual assault or any information that may lead to the identification of the survivor.

Art 16: Dealing with minors (Journalists shall protect the rights of minors and in criminal and other cases secure the consent of parents or guardians before interviewing or photographing them).

Art 17: Personal grief and distress (Journalists should exercise tact and sensitivity in seeking information and publication).

Art 18: News headlines and sensationalism (Newspaper headlines shall be fully warranted by contents of the articles they announce. Photographs shall give an accurate picture of an event not highlight an incident out of context. Journalists shall endeavour to avoid reporting on information that will result in secondary trauma.)

Art 19: HIV AIDS. There are ten sub sections to this article covering areas including the right to confidentiality and privacy; informed consent and the rights of children infected with HIV.