As an editor, I am faced with a barrage of “news” each day which I must sift through to determine what we will cover for the Springs Advertiser and African Reporter and what we will not.
In many situations social media is not a friend to those of us entrusted with sharing the news with our community and we must wade through and avoid gossip and idle speculation.
For the most part we must avoid rumours which have not been proven true – proof which comes after the actions which have been speculated about come to fruition.
This was the dilemma I sat with on Wednesday when we heard that looting was taking place in Springs – in the same street as our offices.
To put everything into perspective, this information came on the back of what had already been a turbulent week across Gauteng.
Before I had even finished my morning coffee on Monday, shops were being looted and set on fire in Joburg and a six-year-old child had been snatched from in front of her Vanderbijlpark school, in front of her devastated mother.
Tuesday dawned and shops in Kempton Park where being targeted, with looters forcing many of the shops in the CBD to close down.
READ: All hostels are hot spots, six arrested in Tembisa overnight and Stay away from Kempton CBD – shots fired (video) from Kempton Express.
Germiston was also seeing its share of looting and violence and on Wednesday was experiencing its second day of violence in the CBD.
At the same time, people across the country were (and are) calling, and signing petitions, for the reinstatement of the death penalty on the heels of the rape and murder of UCT student Uyinene Mrwetyana.
Marches have been organised, appeals to wear black on Friday or stay away from work on Monday have been made, and Brent Lindeque who typically looks for the good things happening in South Africa closed down his website for 48 hours to show solidarity with those calling for action to be taken to curb crime, especially against women and children, in South Africa.
Two different causes highlighting severe problems in our country – xenophobia and an horrific number of crimes against women and children – are in full swing and it was starting to directly impact on our town.
By midday on Wednesday various social media profiles and WhatsApp groups were rife with rumours of violence in Springs.
We were alerted that looters were making their way down Fifth Avenue in the CBD and, stepping out of our office, we found that shops across the town closing their doors.
A journalist set off to investigate and when she found no looting in Fifth Avenue, or Fourth Street where we were informed the looters had moved, we let our readers know on Facebook that there were rumours, but no looting at that stage and we were monitoring the situation.
We were also told by one of the ward councillors, Dean Stone, that he had heard rumours that schools were going to be targeted and the police confirmed that they would be monitoring the schools.
While we shared all this information on Facebook, we made certain (in CAPITAL LETTERS) that our reader knew these were rumours.
We DID NOT publish anything on our website (despite being accused of doing so by readers who saw the below national news article which, as the story states, was not in Springs) precisely because we only had rumours to work with.
We have been lambasted and accused of causing panic among parents for our decision to share with our readers what we had heard.
Other parents called us to ask that we share as much information as possible on our social media platforms so they could monitor the situation and take action if and when necessary.
The question I had to ask myself, and discuss with my staff, before going ahead and sharing the rumours was a simple one.
“Would you as a parent rather know of a possible threat to your child, which may not materialise, so you can decide if you want to take action before it becomes a reality, or would you prefer the paper to wait until a child was harmed, kidnapped or fatally wounded to tell parents about the threat?”
The first scenario requires us to share rumours in the hope that disaster can be avoided and to allow parents to take steps to ensure their children’s safety.
The second allows us to publish verified facts, by only after the catastrophe has occurred and people been hurt.
In making the decision to share these rumours on Facebook I followed the guidelines of the South African Press Code which states: “Section 28.2 of the Bill of Rights in the South African Constitution says: ‘A child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child’.”
In protecting the interest of the child, I reasoned that a panicked parent who took their child out of school early was the lesser of two evils when weighed against the possible harm to the children had we not shared the information at our disposal.
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As Stone commented, when he too was lambasted for sharing the information he said: “It’s difficult. I have a job to do and that is to communicate with residents.
“If something does happen then they say ‘but the councillor knew or the councillor was made aware’ and there were instances of schools in Ekurhuleni where people went to the schools and tried to get access to the school. So those were physically happening.”
“We are not alarmists but we need to communicate with our communities and the best platform to do this is obviously through the Advertiser.
“I only used the information I got from the police and they said they were going to schools and would make sure the children were fine.”
While there is no scenario in which everyone will agree on the course of action decided upon, I stand by the decision to tell parents what we had been told and offer them the option to ensure the safety of their children. This to me is the essence of ethical journalism in which we sometimes have to bend the expected norms of reporting to serve the interests of our community.
So I ask again – would you rather read about a potential threat while you can still avoid the threat, or would you prefer to read about how many people were seriously harmed in an attack, knowing we had the information beforehand but chose not to share it as it was still just a rumour?
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