Face palm: The eNCA (DStv 403) 24-hour South African TV news channel has horrific mistakes in a bad journalism story - ironically about journalism - incorrectly identifying veteran journalists on-screen, and not correcting it even for the eNCA website's online version.
In a story from junior reporter Thabang Masanabo - and not caught and corrected by the various line-producers or journalists who are supposed to spot it instantly and fix it - veteran South African journalists who are not immediately identified audibly which would have mitigate the errors, have the wrong on-screen identity barkers displayed in the lower third graphics.
Who is supposed to check Thabang Masanabo's work at eNCA and checks the video editing, and who checks the loaded on-screen graphic identifiers?
Who is supposed to check the online video before its placed and made live on the eNCA.com website - or is all online video simply being taken from eNCA's broadcast hub with no editorial sub editing or any editor relooking at it first?
To identify someone like the veteran South African journalist Mathatha Tsedu as Thabang Masanabo, and to do the same with others like the very first person interviewed and not called and identified by name, makes for cringe-worthy news reporting television.
It makes it feel as if nobody at eNCA - and who are journalists - really know other, or veteran journalists, or how they look like.
Veteran journalists John Perlman and Pippa Green were identified correctly but the others mistakes by Sunday afternoon were not corrected.
File footage included in the story is not even marked as such or as "archive material" - earlier this year eNCA told the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) it would be vigilant in identifying file footage as such when and where it is included in stories.
The 9 minute story - broadcast mistakes and all - has been loaded onto the eNCA.com website with the same mistakes in its entirety, making for ongoing, highly embarrassing television which nobody at eNCA either spotted, or cared to correct.
It is ironically doubtful if eNCA's Thabang Masanabo "vetaran journalist", will get to real "veteran journalist" level with eye-popping mistake packages like this attached to her name.
