Digital charlatans: the crisis of fake journalism on Facebook
A fake image showing smiling schoolchildren in uniform, purpoting to be the young victims of the Vaal taxi crash which killed 14 learners. The writer argues that many online outlets that present themselves as news site peddle fake news to garner more followers due to a gullible audience.
Image: Supplied
One observes, with mounting indignation, the grotesque proliferation of Facebook pages masquerading as legitimate news platforms and professional journalistic outlets.
These digital charlatans drape themselves in the language of the press while possessing neither its discipline nor its ethics. In truth, they are little more than mercenaries of misinformation, lawless operators who weaponise social media to peddle falsehoods, manufacture scandals, and vandalise reputations for personal/political gain.
These pages are not run by journalists, but are run by opportunists who have never set foot in a newsroom, never endured the rigours of editorial scrutiny, and never submitted their work to the unforgiving discipline of fact-checking.
Their prose betrays their ignorance. Their methods expose their malice. They trample upon the most elementary principle of journalism, the right of reply, with arrogant contempt. Any first-year journalism student knows that allegations demand verification, balance, and fairness.
These fraudsters know none of this, because they were never exposed to such principles. Instead, they operate as hired guns and shadowy proxies, deliberately deployed to poison public discourse and embark upon character assassination with reckless abandon.
The writer examines the alarming trend of Facebook pages posing as legitimate news outlets while lacking journalistic ethics and standards. It explores how these digital imposters damage public discourse, spread misinformation, and conduct character assassinations without accountability.
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They prey on the credulity of unsuspecting audiences, exploiting the ignorance of those who mistake virality for veracity. They cloak themselves in anonymity, hiding behind fake names and stolen logos so that they may defame with impunity and vanish without consequence.
This is not journalism. It is sabotage.
This is not reporting. It is a character assassination.
This is not the press. It is a sewer of digital thuggery.
They are not watchdogs of democracy, but parasites feeding on its decay. They are not truth-tellers, they are fabricators of fiction. They are not journalists, they are imposters playing dress-up with the sacred tools of a serious craft.
Journalism is a profession forged in courage, integrity, and accountability. It is built on verification, balance, fairness, and responsibility. Those who abuse it for personal vendettas and political manipulation deserve not respect, but ridicule, not recognition, but exposure.
We must begin to name them for what they are: frauds, imposters, enemies of truth and vandals of the public discourse. They may wear the costume of journalism, but they lack its soul. And no amount of Facebook followers and likes will ever grant them the honour they so desperately crave.
This attitude of hearing something and failing to verify it, only to rush to a page in pursuit of recognition, is not journalism. These thugs must be exposed. Today you may celebrate them because they have not written about you or your family, but wait until it happens to you.
You will be insulted, humiliated, and judged without ever being given a chance to provide clarity or defend yourself.
(Memela is a former award-winning journalist who has worked for various national newspapers. He also worked as a communications officer in the public sector. He writes in his personal capacity. His views don't necessarily reflect those of the Sunday Tribune or IOL)
MHLABUNZIMA MEMELA
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