When journalists covering television and entertainment in this country start following up stories by doing their own original stories using a published story as only a lead to a new story and not actually as the source and only source, instead of copying and pasting (often erroneous) stories without checking out all the facts for themselves and sourcing their own new information, we will probably start seeing better television and a more accountable TV industry too.
Just off the phone with SABC1 spokesperson Phillip Mabitsela who tells TV with Thinus the list with "revealed" new Generations cast members are not from SABC1, not official and not necessarily completely, or partially, correct.
Yet several publications and journalists blatantly copied and pasted the Sunday World article word for word without any original fact checking (a story which strangely, oddly, didn't contain any reference that the SABC was asked for comment), any new calls or media enquiries to actually verify any of the information.
"From our side as SABC1, from Generations' side, we haven't announced any confirmed cast list on Generations," Phillip Mabitsela tells me.
"As soon as we have names confirmed, we will say these are the people who will be in the new show, this is the cast list, this is what is happening. Officially we haven't released any information or what is happening around Generations."
"We can only speak to information we have released ourselves around Generations. People are speculating. For a while now people have been throwing names around. But officially we haven't announced anything," says Phillip Mabitsela.
