Accuracy is vital to our journalism

Jerry Bungu | Thursday November 15, 2007 00:00

It is encouraging to note that a new crop of journalists has been infused into the media industry while the old graduate into their mentors as editors and the more adventurous taking up new careers in the public relations and marketing fields. Interesting, encouraging and indeed that is the way it should be.

However, the nation's new crop of media practitioners, much more often than not, is just left to explore their ways into the profession when they enter the newsrooms. Very little, if not none in terms of training goes into shaping the new and aspiring journalists in the media houses of Botswana regardless of their flowery academic qualifications. The art of journalism cannot be mastered over night - there should be an induction process.

In the absence of proper training for some, whose qualifications may not even be related to journalism let alone the media, the results of the journalistic efforts have always been disastrous to say the least. Being both a journalist and an avid reader of the local press myself, I find it very awkward how some of the stories we read find their way into the newspapers.

Proper training on house styles should be put in place and more so there should be defined copy flow in the newsrooms to harness the problem of inaccurate and half-cooked stories filtering into the otherwise developing press industry in Botswana. Defined roles should characterise the newsrooms so that at any given point of writing the story, every input is accounted for and mistakes could be traced to their origins - this is where proper delegation and defined copy flow plays a vital role in the newsrooms.

Readers have been subjected to half-baked stories with inaccurate information and by the way, readers should not be taken for granted. A local newspaper recently reported that President Festus Mogae officially opened the just-ended Global Expo 2007 at GICC.

This was grossly misinforming the nation and giving credit where it is not due. Actually on this occasion, Thuli Johnson, the managing director of Barclays Bank of Botswana was the one who officially opened the event while President Festus Mogae just graced the occasion as a guest - accuracy of information should not be underestimated. Where did this journalist get his/her information and were there any efforts by the editors to find out how the reporter came up with the story? This calls for editors to be accountable for everything that they put into the newspaper.

In one of the local newspapers, the director of corporate affairs at Kgalagadi Breweries Limited (KBL) had to correct some misinformation that KBL was listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) that was written in one of the newspaper's issues. This goes to tell us that our journalists are not informed of what they write. A well-informed reporter should be able to make a distinction between Sechaba Brewery Holdings Limited which is listed as a public company and KBL which is partly owned by Sechaba. This goes on to show the amount of research that goes into the stories we read in the local press.

In another medium - television - the presenter of The Eye programme exposed himself when he suggested to the minister of works and transport that the Air Botswana privatisation was done 'hastily'. Minister Motsumi reminded the journalist that a process that was started in 1998 cannot be said to have been done hastily. The presenter went stuck and all the viewers felt sorry for him. This is all about asking relevant questions in interviews in order to get the desired answers. This can only be achieved by making the necessary research before going for the interview.

Exit the reporters, enter editors who should be trusted with bringing a final product that is readable and discernible. But what has been seen are unproofed work and to a greater extent unedited stories that bring about such phrases as 'PPADB Board' and 'whether they would accomplice their mission'. In many cases pictures have been wrongly captioned where someone is given a name that does not belong to him or her. This has seen our papers routinely apologising for wrong information in stories or pictures.

In his state of the nation address, President Mogae was proud that the media has grown over the past ten years of his tenure and now the onus is on the media practitioners to jealously guard against any thing that will bring the media into disrepute lest the products are associated with mediocrity.