FAKE ‘TEMBISA 10’ ARTICLE NOMINATED FOR GLOBAL AWARD

The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) has expressed its concern about the nomination of the Tembisa 10 article at the Global Media Awards.

The article made headlines around the world last year when Pretoria News editor Piet Rampedi wrote an article about a mother from Tembisa who gave birth to 10 babies. At the time the article said that she had broken the world record.

The article was slammed as fake news when the health department, social workers and hospitals argued that none of them have heard about the mother or her babies.

At the time the alleged father accepted donations from across the company to help with the babies.

In a statement, Sanef said that it had written to the International News Media Awards to express its concern, but despite this, it remains one of the nominees.

“We also find it entirely unsatisfactory that in its response, the INMA says the judges were ‘judging the quality of the social media campaign, not the story itself”, the statement read.

The statement went on to say that the INMA stated it was “not in a position to reverse their jury’s decision to shortlist the social media campaign, given the information at their disposal during the judging process in February 2022, the additional context surrounding the story will be weighed in the ongoing process to select winners which will be announced by INMA in June 2022.”

Image credit: Swisher Post News