Transcript Media ETHICS

Dr Musawenkosi Ndlovu, a
Senior Lecturer at UCT and
Mandela Mellon Fellow at
Harvard University
 South African media (and citizens) have not yet fully embraced the
notion of online journalism.
 As a result, online journalism in SA is still a few years behind many
other countries, especially “first” world countries. I
 t is almost fifteen years old; it is very much a post-2000
phenomenon.
 “News24 is probably the first to venture into online journalism dating
back to 1998 and is South Africa’s biggest news site. Its only post
2000 that most news companies started looking into the practice…”
(ENCA online journalist, 2014:14).
 Perception: online journalism is not quite journalism (Prestige?)
 “The country’s media is still very conservative and most editors I can
only describe as “old school” and have not fully embraced the notion
of online journalism. As it stands most news media already have a
newspaper or tv news or radio news and online is just an addition
onto what they already have.
 “Besides Daily Maverick, I would say not. Online is still viewed as the
poorer cousin of journalism, but Daily Maverick has gone a long way
to dispel that notion” ((Daily Maverick, 2014)
 Commercial Reasons:
 “One aspect is digital newsrooms will struggle to generate the same
amount of revenue traditional newsrooms can” (interviewee, 2014)
 Ethical Reasons
 “There is also a perception amongst journalists, citizens and editors
about online journalism that we are just a longer version of twitter
and other social media which means that facts might be wrong and
information misleading and this is far from the truth. We still have a
long way to go in terms of online journalism” (ENCA, 2014)
 “Credibility for the online journalist has been an uphill battle…” (Daily
Maverick, 2014)
 I distinguish between Digital- only and Subsidised –Copy provider
 The majority of news websites are linked to a traditional publications
that provide free or subsidised copy to their online presence.
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Subsidised Copy
www.news24.com – owned by Media24,
www.enca.com owned by eNCA,
www.ewn.co.za owned Primedia,
www.iol.co.za owned by the Independent Newspapers,
www.sabcnews.com owned by SABC –
 www.mg.co.za owned by Mail and Guardian LTD
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Daily Maverick
Moneyweb,
Politicsweb,
Ground Up,
Health-eNews
 Bloggers fall into a grey area as to whether they meet the definition
of online journalism.
 Bloggers and/or aggregator sites .
 If the majority of the content provide is syndicated newswire,
rewriting other people's content or copying and pasting tweets into
an article, I would struggle to define that as journalism.
 “No. Like I have mentioned there is currently no major news site in
the country that does not have a newspaper or tv or radio feeding
into it. So almost all newsrooms depend on these mediums as a
source of content. Only a handful of newsroom have dedicated
online journalists” (Daily Maverick, 2014).
 Definitely, we have about 12 million people consuming online media
in SA, through various formats including mobile and growing at a
rapid pace.
 Original copy is produced as opposed to syndicated wires/press
releases,
 The principles of journalism are used to create the copy (research,
fact checking, right of reply, etc).
 Bloggers and/or aggregator sites can NOT tick those boxes.
 If the majority of the content provide is syndicated newswire,
rewriting other people's content or copying and pasting tweets into
an article, I would struggle to define that as journalism.
 “This impacts negatively on how online journalism is meant to work
– breaking news as it happens when it happens but as an online
journalist you need to wait for the newspaper, radio news or tv news
to break it before you can online”.
 The principles remain the same, but digital is pushing journalists to
produce more than just written words.
 Audio/video will soon become part and parcel of what is expected as
news organisations are required to keep pace with reader demands.
 “Whereas with tv you have 2 minutes for a story or radio which is
about 30 seconds or print which has space limitations online has no
space limitation and thus competition is fierce because all the
content you want to put out, you reader must be interested enough
to go through all of it. Online you have multimedia packages, info
graphics, interactive maps, you can play around with the top quotes,
a picture gallery. It gives enough space to work”.
 Multimedia journalists complain that:
 “The biggest problem for online journalists is twitter because most
people pick up the news from twitter and that is why all media
houses have twitter accounts to re-direct followers to the full story
on their websites.
 In this day and age people prefer their news on the go, and the
greatest challenge is cutting what would have been a 2000 words
story to 200 words because online audiences don’t have time for
long stories and most likely would read the first five lines and move
on”
 “Yes. There are different kinds of online journalists just like offline
journalists – you have tv reporters, radio and print. Online you have
online journalist and multimedia reporter.
 I write as a multimedia reporter and the conditions are different. I
have to do what used to be five people jobs by myself – shoot own
video footage, write and edit a television story, take pictures and edit
them for online, write text story for online and then still tweet at
stories”.
 “Not too different. One aspect is digital newsrooms will struggle to
generate the same amount of revenue traditional newsrooms can.
Whilst that may not necessarily mean they're paid less, they will
definitely have fewer resources and be required to produce more
than traditional counterparts, and can place even more pressure and
workload on them. Organisational structures will be much flatter, but
again these are differences given the smaller budgets. They won't
have print deadlines to meet, so that generally means they are on call
24hrs and submitting copy at all hours of the day. They are also less
inclined to be office based as they can work from the field, home, etc
easier than traditional journalists.”
 “We all have different views. But an online space gives more
opportunity to present your story with all information. And it is more
challenging.”
 “The brand we've created is alluring to journalists not because of the
medium but the working environment and editorial philosophy. If we
were a print publication, I would expect it to be the same. Credibility
for the online journalist has been an uphill battle, but it something we
have worked hard dispelling over the last four and half years. But I
would say that we're in a minority, especially compared to major
markets like the USA and UK, where online publications are better
received” (Daily Maverick, 2014).