The first thing you are taught at journalism school is not to trust anything you see on the internet. The second is to check your sources.
The Citizen newspaper’s front-page picture on Monday showed a crowd of people fleeing a large wave. The newspaper said the photograph had been taken by an amateur photographer in Sri Lanka, one of the countries hit by the massive tsunami on December 26.
A five-minute internet search yielded the same photograph, taken in China in October 2002, of the annual flooding of the Qiantang river in the eastern province of Zhejiang.
According to sources at The Citizen, a staff member received an e-mail with “exclusive” tsunami pictures. These were apparently passed on to the editor, who decided to publish them in Monday’s paper.
The pictures were apparently taken by an amateur photographer named Youling Popo.
High tides, especially in September, cause the water in China’s Qiantang river to form spectacular waves. The event is witnessed by many spectators each year.
“In 2005, newspapers should be far more alert to things like this,” Guy Berger, head of the media and journalism department at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, told the Mail & Guardian Online on Monday.
“When someone offers The Citizen exclusive pictures of a major natural disaster like the tsunami, alarm bells should be ringing. It is not like we were born yesterday.”
The images have, in fact, been circulated on the web in the past two weeks as tsunami pictures, and can be found in many online mailboxes.
At least two staff members of the M&G Online were e-mailed the “tsunami pictures”.
A closer look at the photographs reveals that they could not have been taken in Sri Lanka.
The people running from the water are smiling, and they all look Chinese. The tower in the background is unmistakably Chinese.
“Mistakes like this make a mockery of the media and damage the image of journalists being trustworthy selectors of news,” Berger said.
“The Citizen is not the first newspaper to make a mistake like this. I think in the past few years we have seen a lack of control in the newsroom and there should be a greater sense of scepticism among journalists.
“Journalists are less careful; this is due either to a lack of experience or they do not seem to be learning from previous experiences.
“Newspapers are responding to competition by compromising in quality, and that is not only bad for the image of the paper in question but for journalism as a whole.
“You cannot blame a mistake like this on the fact that the internet is an almost uncontrollable medium for the spread of manipulated or false pictures.
“The internet can never be the excuse. The fact that it exists should make journalists more sceptic about sources offering pictures.”
The Citizen‘s acting editor, Martin Williams, indicated that he would only respond to questions in writing. He had not done so by 3pm on Monday.
Sources at the The Citizen say Williams will publish a correction in Tuesday’s newspaper.
The pictures can be seen on Truthorfiction.com