“It allows public figures and it allows politicians to make claims that don’t go checked. And I think that’s where we play a role. We come in and look at those claims and we have the ability and the time to go through those claims.”
Paula Fray is the former editor of the Star Newspaper and a commentator on the media. She says Africa Check may place needed pressures on newsrooms.
“At the moment Africa Check is not known as much as I’m hoping as it is going to be known. I’m hoping that eventually journalists will be writing their stories and thinking, if my news editor doesn’t pick up that something hasn’t been verified, Africa Check might pick up that it hasn’t been verified. So I’m not going to put anything in my stories unless I can prove it.”
She hopes Africa Check will create a better culture of responsible journalism. The site also deals with stories that get repeated so often that they go unchecked.
For example, a South African musician with 175,000 Facebook followers claimed that white South Africans are being killed at frightening rate. When Africa Check looked into that story, it found that most of the musician’s claims were untrue or overstated.
But the report also demonstrated one of the problems with South African statistics from the apartheid period. Mr. Rademeyer said crime information from that period in South Africa for white neighborhoods is generally quite correct. But he said crime reporting from homelands and townships during apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s lacked statistics.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25