By In Common reader.
Image: an anti-asylum seeker protest in Portswood, Southampton.
Journalism is often a race to get the facts out first.
A lucky scoop can allow a publication to punch way over its weight in terms of clicks, and clicks can mean money.
But there’s a key word here – FACTS.
Someone posting something on the internet doesn’t make it true.
Sharing their words without scrutiny or investigation isn’t journalism. It’s spreading gossip, rumours and possibly inaccurate information.
The Southern Daily Echo was founded more than 120 years ago and has been a cornerstone of information to local people and holding power to account since. Readership has slumped over the years, but it retains an air of reliability and respectability not afforded to citizen journalism sites, where anyone with a phone camera – i.e. anyone over the age of about 10 – can make videos, blogs and other reports, and publish them, with scant regard to tedious things like libel laws and right to reply.
But does The Echo really deserve to be seen in a different light to any other website, chasing the clicks and the cash they bring?
Last night (19/1/26), the seemingly self-appointed leader of small local anti-asylum seeker group – who have been organising regular protests outside a hotel housing asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of their asylum applications – announced via a video on social media that he’s stepped down from his role within the group.
He claims to have been subject to abuse and threats. Note the word ‘claims’.
Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. Maybe what feels like abuse and threats to one person would not be seen as such by wider society.
The Echo saw fit to seize on this piece of information – is it really news? – and quickly turn around a story and a Facebook post, to be read by their 212 thousand followers, and more.
“Southampton Patriots leader steps back after threats” reads the story headline.
The Facebook post goes further, declaring: “Southampton Patriots leader steps down after abuse and threats”.
Has the Echo investigated these claims? They appear not to have even interviewed the man himself for the story, to explore the nature of the claims, let alone sought police reports of threats, examples of the emails allegedly sent or social media posts, or done any entry level investigations.
I may be wrong – but the story on the Echo website only quotes a Facebook post, not any further sources.
The Echo story also fails to mention, let alone challenge, robust – possibly libellous if unsubstantiated – claims made in the video against a local business, two local voluntary organisations and a local councillor – none of whom appear to have been given a right to reply in the original story (whether further articles are to follow remains to be seen but is likely – after all, more stories on what appears to be a hot topic mean more clicks).
They also seem not to have taken time to look more widely on social media, to note that the man in question was in Exeter at the weekend, taking a prominent role in an anti-asylum seeker march.
Perhaps, if the Echo decided the announcement was news-worthy, they could have taken a moment to explore what this individual stepping away from this local group means – is it a move away from campaigning in general, or just at a local level. After all, if it’s worthy of a news story, surely it’s worthy of a decent, rounded one, one that gives people more information than simple clicking on the individual’s social media post?
For my money, the most objectionable aspect of the coverage, is that The Echo didn’t even bother to put ‘abuse and threats’ in quotes on its Facebook page or in the story headline.
The post, which has probably been seen by tens of thousands of people perhaps more, therefore states as fact: “Southampton Patriots leader steps down after abuse and threats”.
So it appears that this cornerstone of local journalism – a long trusted institution – is happy to lift some words from a video posted on social media and without any critique, publish those words as bona fide fact.
Can this really be called journalism?
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