The eNCA (DStv 403) 24-hour South African TV news channel has admitted to making mistakes in a story by using violent visuals without identifying it as archive footage, and reporting that attacks were taking place "across the country" in a story about Mozambique.
It led to a complaint and a case before the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA).
eNCA was found not guilty of breaching the broadcasting code of conduct, but the BCCSA said the complaints regarding eNCA failing to identify violent visuals as archive footage and the use of the phrase "across the country" in a televised story in December 2013 were justified, and that eNCA admitted it as mistakes.
The BCCSA in its judgement in the case warned eNCA that its newsroom "would be well advised if, in future, it were to double-check whether the material broadcast is archive material or not. Indeed, if this kind of error is repeated, we will be obliged to consider finding against" the broadcaster.
The case was brought after a complaint, Nigel Hallowes told the BCCSA that the eNCA story from eNCA reporter Nicolaus Bauer allegedly would cause South Africans to cancel their holiday bookings to the country and said the story showed a "bad level of journalism" .
The complainant told the BCCSA that the incidents which took place and which are few, were restricted to two provinces, that the story was "sensationalistic journalism at its worse and extremely damaging to the Mozambican tourism industry".
The complainant told the BCCSA that "secondly the timing of the voice over mentioning 'Mozambican unrest' while showing the file footage of a riot that happened more than three years ago is misleading at best".
"Mozambique relies heavily on tourism and especially the December holidays where upwards of 100 000 people pack the beaches of this beautiful country."
"This type of journalism will do untold damage".
eNCA told the BCCSA that the reporter erred in the two instances, that the visuals should have had an "archive" tag to ensure that viewers were not misled, that the use of the word "countrywide" was wrong, and said that eNCA reporter Nicolaus Bauer was spoken to and admitted that it was an oversight, but not maliciously done.
