The Citizen newspaper on Tuesday admitted it had been taken in by a hoax after it published pictures showing people fleeing what they said was the tsunami in Sri Lanka.
Acting editor Martin Williams said the newspaper regrets being taken in by the hoax.
”A full investigation is under way. If appropriate, disciplinary steps will be taken,” he said in a story published on the front page.
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.
At least two staff members of the Mail & Guardian Online were also e-mailed the ”tsunami pictures”.
A five-minute internet search yielded the same photographs, taken in China in October 2002, of the annual flooding of the Qiantang river in the eastern province of Zhejiang.
Williams said The Citizen were not the only newspaper to be taken in by the hoax.
According to a spokesperson at the Chinese embassy in Pretoria, the Calgary Herald in Canada and various other United States publications made the same mistake.
Kevin Bloom, editor of the The Media industry magazine, told the M&G Online on Tuesday said the mistake will not damage The Citizen.
”I think disciplinary action will be appropriate, since it was not difficult to detect that these pictures were not of the Asian tsunami,” Bloom added.
”When the British Daily Mirror published false pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, the editor, Piers Morgan, was sacked,” he said.
”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 M&G 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.”
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 pictures can be seen on Truthorfiction.com
Citizen falls into tsunami trap