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State of the Newsroom 2017 Fakers & Makers

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State of the Newsroom 2017 Fakers & Makers State of the Newsroom 2017 Fakers & Makers A Wits Journalism Project Edited by Alan Finlay Lead researcher and editor: Alan Finlay Additional research: Odwa Mjo, Ntando Thukwana, Nomvelo Chalumbira Content advisory group: Lesley Cowling, Indra de Lanerolle, Bob Wekesa, Kevin Davie, Ruth Becker, Dinesh Balliah, Mathatha Tsedu For Wits Journalism: Professor Franz Krüger Photography: GroundUp Production, design and layout: Breyten and Bach Proofreading: Lizeka Mda External review: Ylva Rodny-Gumede Thanks to our donors and other contributors: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Fesmedia, The Press Council and the South African National Editors’ Forum. Cover photograph: Ashraf Hendricks/GroundUp (CC BY-ND 4.0). September 27, 2017. Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) regional secretary for the Western Cape, Tony Ehrenreich, addresses a crowd outside the provincial legislature. Thousands marched under the Cosatu banner in Cape Town calling for an end to state capture. Find full report at: www.journalism.co.za/stateofnewsroom CONTENTS ii. PREFACE Franz Krüger iii. INTRODUCTION Alan Finlay 1. THE NEWSROOM IN REVIEW: 2017 10. HOW REAL IS “FAKE NEWS” IN SOUTH AFRICA? Irwin Manoim and Admire Mare 21. GETTING THE STORY STRAIGHT: The take up of fact-checking journalism in South African newsrooms over the past five years Bob Wekesa, Blessing Vava and Hlabangani Mtshali 28. NEWSROOM SURVEY: 2017 Journalists in South Africa’s newsrooms: Who are they, what do they do and how are their roles changing? Alastair Otter and Laura Grant 48. APPENDICES 48. Comparable circulation of daily, weekly and weekend newspapers, Q3 2016 and 2017 50. Selected insights from the Broadcast Research Council’s Radio Audience Measurement (Nov 2017 release) 52. Media freedom incidents in 2017: Consolidated South African National Editors’ Forum media statements 55. Press Council report for 2017 57. Summary of complaints received by the Press Council in 2017 60. Demographics of editors of major South African newspapers i PREFACE There is no question that journalism across the world continues to be under enormous pressure. Under the impact of new technologies which are changing audiences in profound ways, traditional media business models are in decline and may not survive. Political pressures continue, and the increased use of targeted misinformation – often described as fake news – undermines trust in more formal journalism. And yet journalism continues to matter. The forms and institutions through which information circulates may – and probably will – change. In the last edition of this report, we highlighted the increasingly blurry line between those inside and those outside the newsroom, all feeding the information ecosystem. But no matter the changes in forms and structures, citizens’ need for reliable, solid information will not disappear. Democracy depends on it. In confronting these uncertain times, journalists and those interested in the media need solid information and analysis of the media landscape itself. A few years ago, Wits Journalism embarked on researching and writing these regular reports to deepen the public understanding of important trends. Our interest is not just academic, in two senses. For one thing, we have chosen to adopt an approach that takes the best of academic rigour, without losing accessibility for the text. The research presented here has been peer reviewed in the academic way, but it has tried to keep to a style and tone appropriate to a wider audience. In another sense, Wits Journalism has never seen its role just as teaching journalism in the traditional academic sense. We are deeply enmeshed in the world of professional media: our career-entry students learn through doing journalism; we host major events such as the 2017 Global Investigative Journalism Conference that brought 1300 muckrakers from 130 countries to our campus; our projects produce significant, award-winning journalism in their own right and our grants support the telling of stories that might otherwise remain untold. Our strength lies in our deep integration into the working world. Our students need to be prepared for a media that will look very different to today, and so our perspective cannot be that of outsiders. These trends affect us too. This report, the fourth edition, tries to provide a snapshot of the state of South Africa’s newsrooms in 2017. It tries to be both broad and narrow: identifying the broad trends that affect the media, and focusing on some fine-grained detail that provides depth and texture to understand them. As before, we provide an overview of the year’s major developments and events, and then pick out a few particular issues that we feel deserve a closer look. It took around a year to prepare. As we release it, we are beginning to think about the next one, due for release in early 2019. Of course, it is too early to know the detail of what will happen in the media in 2018, but we can begin to choose themes and topics that deserve a closer look. If you have suggestions, or feedback on this report, please let us know. A warm word of thanks must go to everyone who worked on the venture, particularly Alan Finlay, the lead researcher and editor. But there were many others who contributed with feedback and suggestions or in other ways, and can’t all be named here. We are also particularly grateful to the Media Programme of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Fesmedia), which supported aspects of the research. Adj Prof Franz Krüger Head of Department, Wits Journalism ii INTRODUCTION By Alan Finlay For the first time, in this State of the Newsroom report we research included here shows, researching fake news publish our newsroom survey – an attempt to map the poses several problems of methodology and definition. roles, demographics and experience in a cross section of (Some argue that we should do away with the term newsrooms in the country. altogether). We have read over the past few years seemingly relentless Despite this, authors Irwin Manoim and Admire Mare, news on the retrenchments of journalists – some reading who also supervised the students, share some interesting this report are likely to have suffered personally as a result. conclusions. For example, the research suggests that there As print circulation continues to decline, media houses might not be as much fake news circulating in South Africa look to digital to try resuscitate their flagging readership, as we imagine. And when it does go viral, the authors and to shore up their financial losses. At the same time, argue, it typically gets attention by tapping into the latent newsrooms face the imperative of transformation – of racism and sexism in this country. As they write: “All of hiring and nurturing more black journalists and women, the nastiest examples found by the students had a racial and preparing them for senior roles in media houses.1 element, and some had an additional element of sexism.” Here we ask: given all these changes, what do newsrooms “Fact-checking journalism” as an idea of a new genre for look like now? What roles do journalists perform, and what journalism offers a useful counterpoint to the spread of are the demographics of journalists? fake news. But as Bob Wekesa’s article here suggests, fact-checking journalism has yet to gain the traction Our researchers, Alastair Otter and Laura Grant, also in South African newsrooms as an independent and attempt to offer a raw indicator of experience in the marketable genre in the way that it has elsewhere in the newsroom. Frequently, claims are made about the lack of world. senior skills in newsrooms, with the inevitable result of a drop in the quality of our news – but just how junior are the Of course, anyone can “fact check” anything, and call it journalists making the news? that – but if it is to be taken seriously as a genre, it appears to have to have several key characteristics. For example, Usefully, the survey is conducted across a range of there needs to be a commitment to transparency, both newsrooms in the country, from major news producers when it comes to methodology and sources used to such as Media24 and Independent Media, to much establish the truth of a claim. This is different from working younger and smaller independent newsrooms such as with sometimes unverified claims, or using anonymous The Daily Vox and GroundUp, news centres such as the sources, typical of journalism. AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism, and topic-driven wires services such as Health-e News. The Fact-checking journalism can also have the objective of survey can be read in conjunction with our appendix data strengthening democracy, which is not always the case on the demographics of editors of print titles which we of other forms of journalism, such as entertainment news, have updated from last year’s report. sports coverage or even much of our everyday news. Journalists also only sometimes use a public statement In this issue of State of the Newsroom we also offer a or claim as a starting point to coverage, whereas fact- perspective on “fake news”, showcasing research by checking journalism is typically reactive in that this is honours students at the Wits Journalism programme into exactly what it does, rather than setting the news agenda the phenomenon. While the Gupta propaganda machine afresh. shows how dark the darker side of fake news can get, there have been several recent instances of the media While the internet is a powerful enabler of fake news, being caught out by content scamsters – most notably which is dependent on circulation for its authority, fact when Huffington Post was fooled by a blog post arguing checking in its current form is also catalysed by the global that white men should be denied the right to vote, and proliferation of the internet.
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