By Tunomukwathi Asino
AUCKLAND, South Africa – Journalists and other employees can be held responsible for what they say online, the same way they would be held responsible if they publish an article in the mainstream media, a social media expert said.
“There are no special laws which apply to social media,” Emma Sadleir, a social media lawyer, said last week.
“Everything posted on the internet, stays on the internet,” she said, dismissing the notion that deleted posts cannot be traced.
She was speaking on Thursday at the Institution for the Advancement of Journalists in Auckland, a suburb of Johannesburg in South Africa, where 11 media professionals received weeklong training in court reporting.
They were from Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Botswana
The workshop was organised by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in conjunction with the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ). The IAJ has trained about 100 000 media practitioners in recent years.
Sadleir further advised media professionals to treat everything they say online the same way they would say something in public. “Treat everything you put online like a tattoo,” she added.
Sadleir explained that being an employee or a media professional is the same as being a learner in a uniform, where one is expected to act orderly because they are representing their school.
“You were also expected to act orderly because you were representing an institution.”
“Don’t say something online that you would not say to your boss’s face. It’s more public online,” she said.
“Don’t say anything online you cannot defend in terms of your employer’s code of conduct or ethics.”
In February, the Director of Information and Communication Technology Development in the Namibian Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Henri Kassen, revealed that the ministry was in the process of finalising a law that will govern online activity through the Electronic Transaction and Cyber Crimes Bill.
Contained in the proposed law is a clause that provides legal remedy to punish those posting insensitive content and recourse to those wronged by offensive postings. The so-called ‘take down notice’ clause would allow parties to apply for defamatory and insensitive content to be removed from internet sites to prevent further publication.
This follows the posting on social networks of gruesome crime scene pictures of Mirjam Tuyakula Nandjato (24), an International University of Management (IUM) student who was allegedly beaten to death by her lover Ananias Nailenge.
Adding insult to injury was the viral speed at which the news spread, ending up on the NBC language services even before the family was formally notified about Nandjato’s death by the police.