Finance24.com also reported on this story without reading the small print on the website.

Surely it is just the fault of BusRep (& F24?) editors who don’t care to look into the sources – I mean it was a Sapa story, and not written by BusRep staff.

IOL also had an abridged version of it on their main page, in addition to the BR report. Small things like this make you start to wonder if it’s actually worth buying that braodsheet in the morning, or is it just as good as The Sun.

Though it’s not quite as bad as that yet.

I got a heads up, yay!

Sapa may have made the mistake, but BR, IOL & F24 are just as culpable surely.

Another downside of cookie cutter news, that story probably made it onto half the newspapers in SA, and I’m sure none of the editors did so much as bat an eye towards the website.

Then SAPA has credibility problems as Reuters and AFP.

I’d say SAPA is even worse most of the time. At least Reuters and AFP seem to be slightly more conscientious about factual errors.

Btw, the last straw for me in terms of the local press was the coverage of the incident in which a St Stithian’s boy was allegedly beaten by guys from St. John’s at a party. Besides the fact that I know people who were there and saw the whole thing, and it was nothing like it was mostly reported, the bias displayed by The Star’s journos was disgusting. That’s not to mention the abusive letter he wrote to an inquiring parent from St. John’s, for which he was reprimanded after the school took it up with the editor.

This is just the latest in a long line of shoddy reporting, for instance does anybody remember that “nukes in the DRC” report in the Sunday Times that could not even get the roles of our civilian spy agencies right? Wayne wrote about it here.
In fact, on average the local press doesn’t seem too good at all, does it?

The additional worry is that if BR, IOL and F24 are getting it wrong as well the question that needs to be asked is whether their editors are doing what their jobs require of them – proofread and assess articles for submission.

The Mail & Guardian itself admitted to being in error when it posted a questionable political cartoon by Dr Jack depicting intellectual Jews as bloodthirsty soldiers in disguise but when one considers how now almost all the local papers are making these types of mistakes repeatedly or engaging in trash journalism it starts to become a worry.

[url=http://www.news24.com/News24/Columnists/Lizette_Rabe/0,,2-1630-1714_1711318,00.html]News24[/url] itself noted a report in this regard about the state of local journalism but they should also pay attention to it.

Wayne,

I know one of those editors and I can tell you the last thing he’s doing is the proof reading/checking for facts.

As for the state of media, locally it’s mostly bad but frankly international media is no better to my mind.

This is nothing – check the reporting in the Zimbabwean Herald:

”
Most of the new farmers who have been showered with inputs since the agrarian reform programme began in 2000 have failed to harvest meaningful yields due to sudden changes in weather patterns which weathermen have blamed on nature.

However, the evidence on the ground suggests otherwise.

While it seems incredible to imagine that weather can be modified it has been scientifically proven that weather conditions in selected localities can be influenced through the same technology used in cloud seeding or through even more sophisticated weather modification methods.
”

They then go and reference a UFO site for the ‘scientific evidence’!

http://www.zimbabweherald.com/index.php?id=44748&pubdate=2005-06-28