Opinion / Columnist
A farewell to factual journalism (now extinct)
15 Aug 2018 at 14:47hrs | Views
The state of a democracy can best be measured by evaluating its journalism. A free press is often called the "Fourth Estate", and its importance is second-to-none for every prospering society.
But alas, it seems that we in Zim are also deprived of this cornerstone of modernity. While we are world-champions of Twitter and Whatsapp groups, the standard of our newspapers in steep decline, and the people influencing opinions work in a shallow and sloppy way at best.
As an example, let's talk about an article published by Foreign Minister SB Moyo yesterday. In the article, he claimed that Nobel peace-price laureate and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf declared that in her view, the 2018 harmonised elections were held freely and fairly.
Immediately, cyber-chaos broke out and dominated much of my TL for the next hours. Journalists, self-declared journalists and self-declared influencers were quick to attack the Foreign Minister for this statement. One particular case stands out: Alex Noyes, an American political scientist who stated, amongst others, that he was at the aforementioned press conference and specifically remembers that former President Sirleaf did not say anything to that effect (I for one find it very peculiar that one can remember exactly all the things that haven't been said, but that's another matter…). Many people retweeted it, and our journalists back home copy-pasted his statement, because why work?
Well, as it turns out, there is a clip of an interview on the website of the BBC. It is not hard to find, and only 30 seconds into the clip, you can hear former President Ellen Sirleaf say loud and clear that "all things considered, the elections were free and fair" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06gkqqd). It is astonishing but at the same time does not surprise me that there have been no retractions, no excuses, no clarifications. The lies just persist in cyberspace for eternity. The tarnish will not be cleansed in cyberspace. And we should all join in signing one last farewell to factual journalism.
But alas, it seems that we in Zim are also deprived of this cornerstone of modernity. While we are world-champions of Twitter and Whatsapp groups, the standard of our newspapers in steep decline, and the people influencing opinions work in a shallow and sloppy way at best.
As an example, let's talk about an article published by Foreign Minister SB Moyo yesterday. In the article, he claimed that Nobel peace-price laureate and former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf declared that in her view, the 2018 harmonised elections were held freely and fairly.
Immediately, cyber-chaos broke out and dominated much of my TL for the next hours. Journalists, self-declared journalists and self-declared influencers were quick to attack the Foreign Minister for this statement. One particular case stands out: Alex Noyes, an American political scientist who stated, amongst others, that he was at the aforementioned press conference and specifically remembers that former President Sirleaf did not say anything to that effect (I for one find it very peculiar that one can remember exactly all the things that haven't been said, but that's another matter…). Many people retweeted it, and our journalists back home copy-pasted his statement, because why work?
Well, as it turns out, there is a clip of an interview on the website of the BBC. It is not hard to find, and only 30 seconds into the clip, you can hear former President Ellen Sirleaf say loud and clear that "all things considered, the elections were free and fair" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06gkqqd). It is astonishing but at the same time does not surprise me that there have been no retractions, no excuses, no clarifications. The lies just persist in cyberspace for eternity. The tarnish will not be cleansed in cyberspace. And we should all join in signing one last farewell to factual journalism.
Source - Jonathan Matika
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