Flowers and frowns for social media journalism

In my column last week, I discussed the symbiotic relationship between mainstream media and social media arguing that they feed off each other”(see, “Old media, new media can live off each other,” Daily Monitor, July 26).

Daily Monitor cover headlines in the past few weeks have in many ways driven online conversation with thousands of shares. That is mainstream media feeding social media.

The converse has also been true and was well captured in a meme posted by Mr Fahad Nyonjo King widely shared on X (Twitter). It showed a man peering into a laptop screen with caption: “Daily Monitor editor concentrating on the space to pick tomorrow’s headline”.

But this relationship could never have been better illustrated than it was in the Sunday Monitor cover headline and story, “Not my grandfather” (July 28). The story was apparently built around various social media posts by young people rejecting President Museveni’s patronising reference to them as his “bazzukulu” (grandchildren) in his letter on recent Uganda Gen-Z protests against corruption in Parliament and in the country generally.

The story was great reading, no doubt. But there was a problem, flagged by a number of people on social media, including veteran media cartoonist and academic @SpireJim. He wrote on X: “These days, you tweet something, and the next day, without even consulting you, some newspaper or blog has published it as an article you authored for their paper”.

He was amplifying an earlier post by @JackyKemigisa who wrote: “Now, Daily Monitor, it is good journalistic practice to ask for permission when using one’s language and images, especially if it gains you a profit. Tell your journalists and editors this is usually taught in ethics class 101”.

There were a lot of arguments for and against by different people on both posts. I considered two of them most significant on the issue at hand. Social media users and journalists should do well to learn from them.

First, from lawyer @IsaacSsemakadde: “…it depends on the degree of public interest in your post. If you comment about public affairs using a megaphone like your X account, you shouldn’t be squeamish about its republication – in whole – by other media – without compensation. Credit is the sole duty here.”

So once you go into public space on a public issue, journalists are at liberty to quote you [accurately] in a story provided they credit you for your opinions.

Second is journalism scholar, media trainer and executive director of African Centre for Media Excellence, Dr George Lugalambi on his X hanlde (@glugalambi) posted: “A news publication should ask for your consent to republish your opinion. In fact, it is in their interest because they could be held liable or responsible for any misrepresentations, offensive statements or contested assertions in your piece”.

You will notice that Mr Ssemakadde offered a legal perspective while Dr Lugalambi gave an ethical perspective. Both are right. However, we know in journalism that what is legal is not necessarily ethical and as I have written many times, journalists should fortify themselves on ethics and argue the law as a last resort.

Now to the new phenomenon of content curation in journalism that could bring perspective to the decisions of Daily Monitor editors’ in this case.

“Content curation is the strategic process of discovering, gathering, and organising relevant information from diverse sources to present it in a meaningful and cohesive manner… Content curation involves sifting through the vast amount of information available online and selecting only the most relevant and valuable content for your audience.”

Thus, today’s – and tomorrow’s editor, is not one that waits on stringers to file stories. Rather he/she is a content curator that navigates the maze of information in the digital realm and helps their audience make sense of it.

This is well summarised by Robin Good in his article, “Content Curation: Why Is the Content Curator the Key Emerging Online Editorial Role of the Future?”

He writes: “In a world where attention has become so scarce to become as valuable as currency and where quality information on a specific topic requires ever more time and attention to be found, the value that could provide those who have the ability to organise, select, compile and edit the most valuable information on any one topic is incommensurable.”  

The long and short, therefore, is that Daily Monitor editors did an excellent content curation job but they missed a step on ethics.

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