This fateful Monday morning I don’t know whether to hide my head in the sand, or face head-on the reality that journalists are human too.
Last weekend has been a terribly embarrassing time for the mainstream media, and by extension we the little brothers and sisters at the community press.
Reports all-round suggest that the widely-read Johannesburg-based weekly broadsheet, the all-powerful Sunday Times, had issued an unreserved apology for stories published in previous editions.
The newspaper even went further and committed to return awards won for — now wait a minute! — false reporting. My foot!
The articles concerned were based on the rather ground-breaking supposed exposes about an alleged Cato Manor “death squad”, the disputed “rogue unit” at SARS and so forth.
It does not matter anymore for me to detail what the reports were about, simply because by its own admission, the Sunday Times has poured a bucket of ice-cold water over its work of
enterprising investigative journalism. Oops!
Talking about the often prestigious media awards, my cub reporter colleague and now African football anchor at the Supersport channel, TK Kwenaite, once revealed a painful lived experience
back in the old days.
What happened was that TK (not Mashaba, dammit!), used to do freelance work for a respected weekly newspaper, covering sporting codes ranging from soccer to athletics.
He said he used to send — either by telefax or phone dictate — copy to a senior sports reporter at the said weekly newspaper.
The next day when he checked the newspaper, TK’s stories were (word-for-word) published under the senior sports reporter’s name.
Remember that TK was paid per published article, meaning money was lost to my friend at a very young age.
The cherry on top — or is it bitter fruit? — was that the latter senior sports journalist went on to win an award, with stories clearly plagiarised from my good friend TK Kwenaite.
And oh, pray for us in coming weeks as we profile our packages for the prestigious 2018 Caxton Excellence Awards, against upwards of the group’s 157 footprint of community-based titles.
In the last leg of the awards we did not do that bad, with The BEAT shortlisted for the Best Headline section.
I have to continue expressing our downright amazement at how the newspaper continues to do well, with readers crying out for more after the “sold out” signs went up in recent weeks.
The newspaper with the headline, “Accused number four”, was also sold out at distribution points in Bela-Bela, following similar roaring success by the previous one with the headline “Hawks
bombshell”.
This week I anticipate we should be grappling with a number of potential stories, among these the much-publicised alleged shenanigans at VBS Mutual Bank.
One does not think it would be unfair to ask municipalities across the Waterberg to confirm or indeed deny any dealings with VBS Mutual Bank.
If we crack it, such a story would be of huge interest to local communities.
— The BEAT
