Mishaps hit Gupta TV’s website
DAINFERN - The Gupta-controlled 24-hour news channel, Africa News Network 7 (ANN7), has had a bumpy start, and indications are that its website is not faring too well either.
The website and its staff seem to be having a few geography mishaps, and believe that Four Ways (instead of Fourways) is a township in Johannesburg, instead of the affluent suburb within the larger Sandton area.
While the news website struggled with the simple facts of the area, a burst pipe in Dainfern caused great confusion as journalists, sub-editors and the gatekeepers that be at ANN7 mistook Dainfern for Dain Fern. This caused much excitement among local residents on the morning of 3 September.
And that wasn’t all: when using the search tab on the website, all stories churned out are time-stamped to have been posted on Thursday 1 January 1970. No matter what word or phrase you search the same stories are also appearing.
While this could be attributable to be a loading error pertaining to backdated news that was loaded to the website, it doesn’t bode well for South Africa’s newest news channel.
ANN7 is a nearly two weeks old, but the website is still in BETA testing. While this means the website errors shouldn’t be to harshly criticized as it is still working out the kinks, it does call into question why the channel took to the airwaves without a running and professional website to support it.
Comment from the ANN7 online team is still pending.
