South African news organizations are grappling with the misuse of their content by social media accounts posing as legitimate news sites. Journalists highlight the erosion of ethical standards and call for stronger regulations on digital platforms. The rise of AI-generated content adds further challenges to the industry.
New media technologies have transformed journalism by broadening platforms and reaching wider audiences, but the absence of robust regulations on content ownership poses significant hurdles. Social media profiles often masquerade as news outlets, republishing material from established sources without creating original work, which compromises journalistic ethics and integrity.
SABC News, as a public broadcaster, actively promotes sharing its content across languages and platforms to maximize public access. Aasra Bramdeo, SABC Digital News Editor, emphasized this approach: “I would say we encourage our audience to share our content, to repost our content. We share our content as widely as we possibly can. On occasion, we even share our content with our competitors. This means that the message that we have to share gets to more people, which is of course what we want.”
However, Bramdeo noted the distress caused by uncredited reuse: “As a legitimate news organisation... we are bound by policy; we are bound by ethics; we are bound by professional codes. And to consistently see how people bypass this... is sad for us as an industry... The SABC... invests massively in respect of the resources that we put in to create... public service news content. And therefore, the impact on us when that ‘content is stolen’... it actually cannot be measured.”
Obakeng Maje, editor of the Guardian newspaper, pointed to broader repercussions: “This also causes significant financial and professional damages... What is surprising is that even our community radio stations... are doing the same. They will use another journalist’s work without even giving a credit. At the end of the day, the work belongs to the primary source.”
The advent of artificial intelligence exacerbates these issues, as AI tools scrape and repurpose online content. Glenda Daniels, a professor of media studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, warned: “There isn’t proper policy about intellectual property rights and about copyright... So what we are finding... is an aggregation of data... pulled together as a story... The result of which is journalism. Journalists have lost jobs. Media companies are struggling to pay.”
Industry experts advocate for enhanced policies that compel technology firms to respect content rights, aiming to safeguard journalistic standards amid digital evolution.
