SECTOR 4 4.1 The standard of reporting follows the basic principles of accuracy and fairness Panellists agreed that on a general level, there is fairness in the media in Lesotho, however, this depends on each media house and the editorial choices they make. Accuracy remains a big challenge for the media due to the lack of capacity in the newsrooms, with many journalists having no proper training. It was noted that this has resulted in mistakes such as providing the wrong names of people, captioning pictures incorrectly and making grammatical errors. When it comes to specialised news, such as development or court news, the glaring mistakes and professional negligence become clear. Many journalists do not appear to fully understand NGO or development discourse as these news stories frequently read differently from their intended meaning. Inaccurate coverage on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals were cited as examples. Court case reporting is often inaccurate with instances of the news article differing from the court transcripts as the journalists lack the skills to correctly interpret legal language. Accuracy is also affected by language. Stories written on press conferences held in a different language (e.g. Sesotho) can sometimes be distorted during the translation process into English. Panellists from the NGO sector complained about the media’s one-sided coverage and bias, given their tendency – particularly in the state media – to focus solely on ministers or other senior government officials. ‘I always have a problem with the print media. When we invite journalists to our events, they focus on the minister and do not say who the event was organised by. The story is often one-sided. Sometimes we use our resources to invite the journalists, but they don’t even recognise the organisation that organised the event. The essence of the event gets lost in the story.’ ‘State media operates wholly to propagate the views and ideologies of the ruling party. Information is consciously altered to suit the interests of the government in power. Stories are therefore not balanced because they focus on the minister only.’ However, it was also mentioned that in the private media, balanced stories are written but are often sensationalised, thereby impacting on their accuracy. Panellists deemed fairness better than accuracy in news stories, yet commentaries are not considered fair. It was felt that most commentaries insult or ridicule people, at times there is a direct and unwarranted attack on the character of a person. Panellists felt that print media was much better than radio. Most stories on the radio are reported in a polarised way – the same story can be reported on two 43 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER LESOTHO 2018