Journalists and media houses should be wary of publishing tweets, blogs and Facebook postings of third parties because they can be held legally responsible for the publication of offensive or defamatory material, says legal consultant Justine Limpitlaw.
Statements that are repeated on air, online, in print, and even on a social media platform would have more serious consequences for journalists and their employers than for ordinary citizens, as laws governing the media apply irrespective of the medium, she said. Addressing a seminar on social media in newsrooms at the South African National Editors’ Forum council meeting in Grahamstown last week, she said defamation laws did not change in print or online and nor did contempt of court, and hate speech.
Media houses and their journalists will be easily identifiable and therefore prosecuted if they used social media to violate secrecy or state security laws prohibiting publication, as an offence will be deemed committed in the same manner if they infringed copyright laws.
She said that the basic rule should be that if one would not like the information to appear on the front page of a newspaper under their by-line, they should not put it on social media networks.
"It is advisable to tweet and retweet (or broadcast tweets) as if what you are saying or passing along is information you would put on air or in print yourself."
She also warned that context, attribution and clarification for social media, such as tweets, SMSes and blog posts, should be provided if necessary.
Those engaged in the practice of social media should bear in mind that obtaining information correctly remained an essential principle in journalism ethics.
Ms Limpitlaw said that Reuters advised its employees that internet reporting was "nothing more than applying the principles of sound journalism to the sometimes unusual situations thrown up in the virtual world".
"The same standards of sourcing, identification and verification apply, and journalists must apply the same precautions online as they would in other forms of news gathering," she said.
Jude Mathurine, lecturer in new media at Rhodes University, said journalists should be aware of regulations pertaining to use, aggregation and curation of data from public social media channels. He warned of copyright violation through using or republishing information "innocently" picked up from social media networks without attribution, permission or remuneration.
"Publishing or retweeting false and inaccurate news or data from realtime updates, livestreams, wikis, or blogs such as organisations that published Bin Laden death mask photos, or fake tsunami pictures, could have serious repercussions for the company," Mr Mathurine said.
Written by: Hopewell Radebe
Picture credit: Thinkstock
• This article was published on Business Day.