BEF pleads with editors, journalists for excellence
Former chairperson of the Botswana Editors Forum (BEF), Spencer Mogapi has implored journalists to ensure that they follow up stories. Mogapi was speaking at an event to celebrate the 20year anniversary of BEF and also to honour him as the outgoing chairperson, at Arirang Restaurant, located at Staybridge Hotels and Lodging.
He started off by making a plea to journalists to ensure that they do follow-ups. Mogapi shared that a friend, who is not in any way involved with journalism, shared that while journalists do good stories, their shortcoming is that they do not do follow-ups to their great stories.
He revealed that there are many reasons why he left journalism, one of which is that he could publicly share his opinion without it being linked to editorial positions of the Sunday Standard and The Telegraph.
“I can assure you that I have relinquished all my editorial powers at the Sunday Standard and also at The Telegraph. The trend the world over is that full-time editorial staff should not be involved in the OP-EDs sections. Other newsrooms have gone further to run OP-EDs sections separately from the newsrooms. I am saying this because it is important for editors to appraise themselves of the fast-changing trends in journalism. We cannot afford to have editors still clinging to how they did things when they joined journalism 40 years ago. The digital world is transforming journalism in ways that would not have been foreseen only a few years ago. So please keep in touch with these new digital trends, they mean a lot to journalism and its survival and its future. Editors should strive to increase diversity and pluralism in the national discourse,” Mogapi said.
He further said it is wrong in his opinion for a newsroom to interview the same people every week, and sometimes the same person for more than one story per edition in a week.
“Editors should find it wrong for example when a picture of one person appears more than once in the pages of one edition. In my opinion, editors should actively seek to put new voices into the mainstream. It should not be listening to the same people week in and week out in the newspapers. It does not help pluralism and diversity when only the same voices are heard over and over again. For example, editors should strive to bring in people from rural areas. It is up to the editors to really strive to increase pluralism to get to reflect the nation in their stories, in their editorial policies and even in their newsrooms,” he said.
Mogapi said newsrooms have a duty not to fuel, but fight the culture of identity politics that ‘we see cracking very strongly into our discourse’.
BEF chairperson, Emang Mutapati, made a commitment that together with her team will steer the Editors Forum in the right direction.
“One of our top priorities will be to unite all editors across the board to speak with one voice and given the support we have been shown in the short period we have been in the office, we have no doubt that the organisation is headed only for better times and greater heights,” she said.
Mmegi Editor, Ryder Gabathuse, advised Editors Forum and MISA Botswana Chapter to come together and speak to the media industry issues as one voice.
“It will help as an industry to speak with one voice,” he said.
Veteran journalist, Metlhaetsile Leepile, implored editors to forge collaborations.
“What I don’t see and I want to see happen is more collaboration. There are stories that I see that would have more impact if all the editors of the newspapers worked together,” he said.