Harare, Zimbabwe – Once again, social media and mobile telephony makes the news for breaking the news.
Early Tuesday, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, were abuzz with news of Retired General Solomon Mujuru’s death. Mujuru, who was 62, died in a fire accident at his home.
Social networks carried vital information to Zimbabweans both locally and abroad ahead of traditional news outlets. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, had by mid-morning updated its profile on Mujuru to indicate that he had died.
If anything, this proves that social networks and the mobile have indeed come to Zimbabwe in a big way, and will increasingly become a source of local news developments.
The news went viral as people shared news via their mobiles phones and on social media platforms.
By mid-morning, the national broadcaster, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, had not yet carried news of Mujuru’s death, prompting some people to question its news-gathering approach.
With technology and news in the digital age spreading information so quickly, the broadcast network was rather slow to fill the information gap.
Regardless, the news spread like wildfire across the twittersphere and of course on to Facebook, with many Zimbabweans expressing shock, commenting and sharing the sad news.
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Reporting on Mujuru’s death confirms that conventional news media in Zimbabwe have to position themselves appropriately in relation to the social networks and mobile phones to report news.
However, even though people heard the news of Mujuru’s death on social networks, they still wanted the information to be verified. Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks encourage people to speculate.
As much as they can be a source of news, social networks can be a repository for false or misleading reports.
What is required is for conventional news outlets to leverage on the power of social networks without compromising traditional journalism principles such as accuracy, brevity, objectivity and fairness.
In the face of social networks’ ubiquitous distribution of news that maybe false or true, traditional news outlets still have a key role to play in providing investigation and context into issues.
