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Monday, January 16, 2012

Why did I Publish Nude pictures of Mbau: The newsroom does not work like laying eyes on a newspaper


“The idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.” Ayn Rand
Many are the times whereby an editor of any publication has to account whether directly or indirectly about what goes out in their house. First of all we have to understand that there are many decisions taken before any story is actually published. And those are your news values whereby a story is weighed against a certain criterion as to determine the space it deserves in a publication and as to whether there’s or no story at all.
I fully understand that this is very complex for John in the public domain and John in the newsroom. So allow me to be logical on my decision as to why I re-published the Khanyi Mbau pictures from as I quoted a secondary source called Local Is Lekker. To be honest, I had internal arguments pertaining to the publishing of this story but I ended with a choice of publishing the pictures anyway.

Some of us have heard or we all have heard of “Public Interest”, yes it is the appeal or relevance to the general populace (You in this case), a news story of public interest (The Mbau Story). What made the story a public matter or rather say interest are what in the newsroom we call news values. And “Public Interest” on its own is a news value.
It is then followed by Prominence in this case, which means I will not allow people to put judgements on my credibility as a Journalist because Mbau is a prominent public icon, she’s not a private citizen which means her life is in public because of the fact that she decided so and that’s one of the reasons that led me to publishing her nude pictures on the website.
I would only agree with critics about my decision that I am running a porn site if I took a private citizen and made her private life public (Law will deal with such a case). In the aforesaid I would point out the Sowetan when they decided to publish photographs of private citizens and yet the editor went on to mumble about “Public Interest”. So my question will be how do you turn a private matter into public matter? Where does the law start and where does it end in such stupidity?
Proximity is one of the news values that made me publish the story because it happened here in South Africa geographical wise. So it bears immediacy or rather propinquity to be treated as a public but not private matter. There are many news values linked to the concerned story but the above mentioned will give you a clear image of why I have published the story.
I am trying to pin-point that GoXtra News is or was never a porn website at all. We are simply an entertainment news publication. And I hope this will indeed open many sights on what takes place in the newsroom, there’s more than laying your eyes on the newspaper, ears on radio and eyes on television. There are key decision makers and mostly they have their own personal agendas and or not limited to interests.
I trust this shall make it all clear why I published Khanyi Mbau’s nude pictures…
Thank you


Buchule Raba
The Editor
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Email: editor@goxtranews.com
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1 comment:

  1. afta this,im sho everyone will be clear....big-ups to u Mr Editor,for always being on top of ur game and bringing us reviting and xciting entertainment news!

    ReplyDelete

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