When the others get it wrong

This week started off on a rather racial note. A farm worker was killed and somehow, in some bizarre way, fingers were immediately pointed at the owner of the farm who was not even at the scene when the shooting occurred.

Needless to say, social media erupted with all sorts of racially driven comments and posts. Please believe me when I say that, we, the Krugersdorp News team, always work hard to give our readers the facts, despite many other conflicting headlines in national news articles.

But what do we do when the others get it wrong and the community looks to us to set the record straight?

Of course my natural instinct would be to question our sources as well. But through the years I have learnt to trust those who trust us.

We have some experience in being accused of getting the facts wrong. We have been lambasted for telling only one side of a story, and we have had to explain why we reported on an issue the way we did.

The lesson learnt from practically all these instances is that we stand together as a team, and that our duty to our community is to report the truth first and foremost.

We, as journalists, might find it hard sometimes to know when someone is just spinning us a story. But we have learnt whom to trust and we sincerely hope the community will also trust what we report.

At the end of the day we are all humans who make mistakes. Admitting to those mistakes also shows and builds character.

To our colleagues in the media, we know how it feels when you get things wrong. To our valued readers, thank you for coming to us first and trusting our information. We really do appreciate it.