SECTOR 4 The media practices high levels of professional standards. 4.1 The standard of reporting follows the basic principles of accuracy and fairness. In general, panellists felt that South African journalists, especially those in the private media, do follow the basic principles of accuracy and fairness and that, compared to the rest of the region, “the professionalism of journalists in South Africa is very high and there are few complaints of shoddy journalism”. Journalists are accused of being lazy at times, especially in terms of “churnalism” - regurgitating press releases without doing additional research or interviews, for example, and articles are sometimes one-sided, when opposing viewpoints are not sought. “It is the intention of most of our journalists to do a good job, but they are sometimes faced with the pressure of time, capacity or limited training. And it is the intention of most of the editors to only publish balanced stories. I think the ANC has done us a favour with all their threats in 2007 and again in 2010 of setting up a statutory Media Appeals Tribunal. As a result, you don’t often see single-sourced articles.” If a newspaper, for example, has published erroneous information, an apology will usually be printed as soon as possible, usually on the page where the original story appeared. There is concern, however, that with online articles there is usually not a link to a specific article correcting the inaccuracy, so often the same mistakes are perpetuated by journalists doing online-based research. “We also rely too much on Google and journalists are lacking basic knowledge. We follow Sapa [the South African Press Association],34 one another on Twitter… we’re no longer going out to find stories, so we often make the same mistakes as one another.” Panellists agreed that there was broad commitment to fairness and accuracy from journalists, but there was always room for improvement, and sometimes it is the small detail – the five Ws and an H – that are lacking, for example. One of the impacts of the global economic downturn and the rise of online news access has been staff cuts in the newsrooms. The reduction in the number of sub-editors has affected the quality and even the accuracy of articles. Often many experienced mentors are also being lost in this way, leading to the ‘juniorisation’ of newsrooms and the loss of institutional memory. 34 See http://www.sapa.co.za/. 60 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER SOUTH AFRICA 2013