Faulty flow of facts
The government’s assertion on our supplies holds no water, writes researcher
told Africa Check the statistics were “taken from various different sources on the internet and not from a scientific journal”.
She said that subsequent to issuing the statement she had come to realise that this is a “very, very complex issue”.
In an e-mail to Africa Check, Le Roux said: (O)ur media release was not a scholarly paper and intended to focus on limiting the contamination of water at source level…”
She provided links to various websites she had consulted. One of them, ZAR.co.za, stated without attribution that “South Africa is one of only 12 countries where tap water is safe to drink. Its (sic) tap water is rated the third best worldwide.”
SAGoodnews.co.za was another one that cited the IWMSA as a reference. The third was the Rhodes University Alumni website which contains a page that lists “many surprising and unknown things about South Africa”.
A Google search of the phrase pulls up more than 2 000 results on Twitter and the in- ternet for the claim, dating back several years, but provides few clues as to its origin.
So what is the conclusion to draw? South Africa’s tap water is generally good and of international quality.
But the claim that it is only one of 12 countries with safe drinking water is clearly incorrect. So is the claim that South Africa has the “third best” water in the world.
For journalists and others, the IWMSA press statement highlights the dangers of relying on sources that use unverified internet research as source material.
The publication of the press release by otherwise reputable news websites shows what happens when the media use unchecked press releases as the basis for news stories.
This article first appeared on Africa Check (http://www.africacheck.org), a non-profit organisation run from the Journalism Department at the University of the Witwatersrand, which promotes accuracy in public debate, testing claims made by public figures around the continent