The number of SIM card fraud cases in South Africa is rising
When the country gathered to watch this year’s State of the Nation Address, it turned out that tuning into the full picture – MPs from the Economic Freedom Fighters being ejected from the chamber – was harder than some might have expected.
People in the chamber with cellphones helped to put the jigsaw together by tweeting photos and as-it-happened commentary.
When officialdom didn’t want the people to see or hear something, it used to have the option of turning off a big switch, but with the arrival of cellphones and social media that big close-down is a lot harder to achieve.
In the past five years, newsrooms in South Africa and across the world have started to receive more and more of what journalists call “user-generated content”. That’s when somebody who is not a trained reporter takes a photo or observes a news story and submits it to a newsroom. Those photos, tweets or reports sometimes get picked up and incorporated into a major news scoop.
Veteran journalist Ray Joseph gives a recent example of the way the public helped to get the news out – the recent wildfires that hit Cape Town. “As the wildfires laid waste to 5 000 hectares understaffed newsrooms battled to cope. Social media was a rich source of content as people turned to social media with first-hand reports of what they were witnessing,” says Joseph.
Pros and cons
Index on Censorship (South Africa) contributing editor Natasha Joseph recalls another significant story that public contributions helped to source.
“When Mozambican taxi driver Mido Macia was chained to the back of a police car and dragged through the streets of an area on Gauteng’s East Rand, the whole thing was filmed by an onlooker, and the Daily Sun was able to share the horrific story that’s led to several police officers being tried for murder when Macia died.”
But although public contributions can expose stories, information being shared is not always accurate and is sometimes deliberately misleading.
Is enough effort being put into stopping lies, half-truths and deliberate falsehoods being accepted as “news”?
Journalists need to rely on old-fashioned fact-checking skills and apply them to new technology and situations, says Stefaans Brümmer, cofounder of the Mail & Guardian Centre for Investigative Journalism: “It is important to realise, though, that the fact that somebody has bothered to put something in writing, online, does not make it any more true than the gossip one may pick up in a bar. We treat it for its tip-off value, meaning it is the start of a process, and usually not worth publishing in itself.”
Journalism evolves
Nic Dawes, chief editorial and content officer at the Hindustan Times and a former editor of the M&G, believes that using this type of public content is changing the way South African news is covered. “This ought to be an enormously positive development, bringing to mainstream attention previously unheard voices and neglected stories.
“However, we should not be so entranced by the power of these technologies, and their ability to combine immediacy and authenticity, that we neglect to do our jobs. We need to combine traditional editorial judgment and processes with new technical capabilities to make sense of the immense stream of content flowing past us.”
Dawes, like others, warns of the risk of newsrooms using this type of material, without checking its background, as a way of saving money. He adds: “Indeed, authenticating user-generated and social content, making sense of it, and layering in additional journalistic value are skills that are the heart of what newsrooms need to do to remain relevant.”
As Ray Joseph says, there is always a risk of being seduced by the idea of being first with a story rather than taking the time to check on its veracity. “For some media houses … they see it as an easy way to access cheap, easy content. And because it’s being done on the cheap, too often the discovery and curation is left to relatively junior staff with more online than actual journalism experience.
“It is here where things can, and do, go wrong, such as breaches of copyright and publication of fake content due to a lack of verification skills and experience, leading to poor judgment calls by some involved in the process.”
Rachael Jolley is editor of Index on Censorship magazine. The latest issue, with a report on user-generated content, is out next week. Follow the magazine on @index_magazine