I would like to differ with your opinion cookie, its not journalist that are not knowledgeable about such information but it’s the people within organizations who are trusted with such brnding requirement that are not too clued up about the precise names and so forth which they give to the media workers.

A journalist will never call your organization something else than what it was given by your communications officer

And how often do publishers receive releases from PR's who've spelled their clients' names in at least three different ways on the same page? Do they have any idea at all?? Are they just so clueless that they attempt multiple stabs, praying that hopefully one will be correct?! How hard is it to KNOW your client?!? What are they paying you for people?!?!

I worked for a big media house in JHB, and some of their senior journalists (senior because they've been in the industry since the days of Drum), cannot string a sentance together that made any sense, nor spell, or ask any relevant questions. But the finger should be pointed at the Editors and copy editors who are useless. They are the ones who let all these errors slip past! Yes, our journo's are a strange breed of dumb, but there is also a strange breed of stupid amongst our Editors. By the by, I'm an Editor, so know how the process works, and the role of quality check and control.

sentance, journo's ... good greef (sick)

I write well because i speak well and i spell very well ( even got certificates to show for it)...i'm an out of work journo....so if you want quality articles in yo publication....pick me and i'll send your circulation figures sky rocketing.

holla back at nomfacey@hotmail.com
thanking you in advance!!!!!

Anna, if you want to knock your fellow colleagues, make sure you've crossed your eyes and dotted your t's, 'cos you never know what's beyond the next corner. My point exactly.

...my point exactly! eish some thickness here ...

I am a freelance sub and sometimes shudder when I see the quality of the writing that gets approved and passesd on to me. I know editors are supposed to fact check but there is a limit. I always believed that the writers are accountable too. Otherwise I can suck a travel piece on Egypt out of my thumb, saying we cruised on the Danube between Cairo and Luxor. (I've just seen a piece that says a certain place is in KZN when it actually is in the Western Cape.) It's sheer laziness on the writers' part and I-don't-know-what on the editors' part. Often I think they don't have the gumption to return a piece, saying that it's simply not good enough. (Besides, why should they make themselves unpopular when there are worker bees who will make them and the writers look good?)

As harsh as this sounds but reality is that we (black) South Africans are dumber than our brothers and sisters on the continent. The standard of our education is much lower than in Africa, where High Schoolers study as many as 11 subjects, all of which they must pass for varsity entry. Yet here we take only six subjects at matric and still manage to fail miserably. I studied in Zambia during my exile days and can now write like an angel!

I tend to share Bongiwe Gambu's assertions that she has, unfortunately, come to realise late in life: when I started working out in newsroom and was shocked to discover the level of ignorance and an ability to think I came to the conclusion that journalism was a profession of the ignorant behaving in an unspeakably arrogany fashion.

The truth of hte matter most journalists start out in work with no background or knnowledge of anything except journalistic skills and some not very good. I used to know drivers at a certain media company who had scant regard for journalists they uised to transport because of their sheer ignorance. I always said were the public to walk in newsroom an dinterview journalsist htat will be day some o fthsoe public members will stop buying papers after shock discoveries that they were rewading material by an immature, humourless and dim-wit.

The truth of the matter is that, like any profession, journalism has its brightest stars who malke the name of journalsim shine but a substantial number of the others are just plain ignorant, clock-watchers employees who survive on the back of others in order to earn a living. So the public knowing the reputation of journalists, panic easily at the mere call of a journalist, thus making even an everage, dim-wit journalsit thinks he's something and, my word, this is an industry big on arrogance and short on intelligence.

It's a profession full of easy, unjustified assumptions, arriving quickly at deducation or inferences by people untrained in formal logic. It survives a great deal on implication, innuendo and less on facts.

As Ms Gambu makes an patently obvious mention of the inability to know hte national credit act, I used to watch those reporting on politics back in the early until recently that they did not know the difference between NPA and DSO, often confusing the bodies which function separately but the latter is supervised by NPA over certain processes. I also saw them refering to NPA as Scorpions, when it should be the DSO that is so-called: it happens in supposedly respected mainstream media as recently as this year.

I remember when I mentioned the CGE to my one-time editor who didn't know what the heck I was speaking about. to some of us, it's questiono of looking at the by-line and then we decide from there whetehr the story is worth reeading or putting any credibility by it because the level of intellect inhabiting the heads of many journalits is no different than that of an infant. But I recognise htat sometimes is good for journalism: one needs a poor conductor to transmit the message in its undiluted form, that is, not to interpret the message. But there are artciles that call for analysis an dthese are left to the knowledgeable.

With the current set-up in the media where the media is avoiding its ethics and codes aqnd opting for sensational reporting its difficult to conclude that this is due to illiteracy or just confusion.

I applied to be a eporter with a community newspaper and the editor told me not to criticise local authority but to search for positives and only report on positives and I mean are there any positives in ANC ruled Municipalities who always have a problem for any probl;em?