The myth of ‘slanted stories to sell newspapers’
Thomas Nkhoma | Monday September 15, 2025 12:50
Public criticism of the media in Botswana often falls back on a convenient cliché - “journalists slant stories to sell papers.” It is an accusation that surfaces whenever a headline feels uncomfortable or a story cut too close to the bone. Yet this claim, when weighed against the hard realities of Botswana’s media economy, collapses entirely. Furthermore, it reveals a limited understanding of how journalism thrives in today’s world.
Let us begin with the basics. Botswana’s print circulation is modest by any standard. Newspapers are printed in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands, and unsold copies regularly pile up as returns. If story angles were really driving sales, circulation would be booming. On the contrary, data shows that readership is stagnant while revenues remain dependent on advertising, not sales.
Even advertising is shrinking. The government, once the largest advertiser, has tightened its belt, while private companies have become more conservative in their spending. The results are not hard to see - retrenchments, thinner newsrooms, and some outlets closing altogether. This pattern is not confined to Botswana. Across the region, South African newspapers such as The Star and Cape Argus have seen their circulations collapse while Namibia’s The Namibian has retrenched staff as ad revenue dries up. The struggles are structural and regional, not the product of individual journalists “slanting stories”.
The same story plays out globally. In the United States, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), once one of the most powerful regional dailies, has undergone successive rounds of layoffs and circulation decline. Despite its rich history and award-winning journalism, the AJC faces the same pressures as Botswana’s papers - declining advertising, a shrinking subscriber base, and the dominance of digital platforms that siphon both readers and revenue.
As things stand now, AJC, which has been printing since 1868, will see its last hard copy rolling off the printing machine end of this year. Consequently, if a newspaper of that stature, in a country with a robust reading culture, cannot sustain itself by “slanting stories”, then it should be obvious that such claims are vacuous when applied to Botswana, where circulation is even smaller and reading culture far weaker.
This points to a deeper truth. Journalism is not collapsing because reporters chase sensational headlines. It is collapsing because the economic model that sustained print has been eroded by technology and shifting consumer habits. Batswana, like readers everywhere, increasingly prefer free news snippets on radio, social media, or WhatsApp. This is not a uniquely Botswana problem. It is global, and it cannot be solved by scapegoating reporters for supposed “story slants”.
To be clear, sensationalism exists. Some outlets exaggerate. Some reporters dramatise. However, these remain exceptions, not the rule. They are too few to account for the structural pressures undermining media sustainability.
To elevate these exceptions into an explanation of media decline is to confuse the margins for the mainstream and to trivialise the work of journalists who, against the odds, continue to inform, scrutinise, and hold power accountable.
The real question for Botswana is not whether journalists slant stories to sell papers. The real question is how to secure the survival of journalism as a democratic necessity. How do we build a sustainable model when advertising shrinks, readership declines, and digital platforms dominate? How do we treat journalism not as a commercial gimmick but as a public good essential to accountability?
I am confident that concerns around media sustainability will soon command the government’s full attention, given their strategic importance in shaping a progressive media ecosystem. Time and again, sustainability has emerged as the fulcrum upon which the survival of journalism rests.
The issue, having featured prominently in many a forum, including the Ministerial Task Team appointed earlier this year by the Minister for State President, Moeti Mohwasa, can no longer be sidelined or treated as peripheral.
And until we confront such questions, the claim that journalists slant stories for sales will remain what it truly is - a convenient myth, vacuous and misleading, that distracts from the global and structural crisis facing media. Media in Botswana, just like in South Africa, Namibia, and even America, deserves a more informed conversation. But in the end, journalism will not be saved or destroyed by story angles. It will rise or fall on whether societies choose to value truth as a public good.
*Thomas Thos Nkhoma is MISA-Botswana chairperson