30 Oct 2017

Press Secretary to the President, Dr Jeff Ramsay says journalists must be reborn in order to service the cyber space.

He explained that the cyber space was the internet or the inter connections of computers worldwide and had in recent years been faced with serious global challenges of the cyber security, which is propelled by fake news propaganda.

Speaking at a fake news, social media and cyber security symposium on October 26, Dr Ramsay said the only way for journalists to survive the fake news industry was for them to professionalise their institution.

A journalist and historian himself, Dr Ramsay complained about corporate media, which he said was interested in setting up its agendas, hence fake news.

However, he said fake news was not new because “If you don’t read newspapers, you are not informed, but if you read them you get misinformed.”

Dr Ramsay defined fake news as something which is not true, but has evidence of truth, adding that there is an increasing decline for journalism in the English speaking world.

He said as the world is going in a digital process, people should be extra careful about mainstream media in giving them wrong information or fake news.

He explained that there are motives by media houses behind fake news that are designed to, for instance, remove certain individuals from power.

He said this is because fake news can be good for someone and at the same time being bad for other individuals.

He therefore called upon media houses as the fourth estate across the globe to hold power to account for every step they take in reporting news.

For his part, Pastor Mogotsi Baloyi told the conference that people live in a post truth era in which the truth cannot be prosecuted.

He challenged everyone to draw the line between freedom of expression and the truth, adding that truth must be absolute and universal.

Pastor Baloyi further said the evidence can be true, but the truth can be false, hence the truth is a matter of morality.

He further explained that no one can arrive at the junction of truth of justice if they have not ascertained themselves about the truth.

The Pastor said truth is more than a body of facts, neither can it be a collecting of judgements or something that is consistent with the mind.

He said truth must be ontological and must reason with the mind because truth is a moral issue of every being.

Pastor Baloyi explained that the only way to win against untruthness is for everyone to rally behind the fact that truth is absolute.

“We should not allow other people to dictate what truth is because truth must be universal,” he added.

The main aim of the conference was to discuss the digital space in the context of the Law (elaw), media (digital media), digital crimes, digital evidence and securing the digital space.

The headline speaker at the conference was the legendary prosecutor, Advocate Gerrie Nel, who is a celebrated South African state prosecutor and has been advocate for the National Prosecution Agency (NPA) for the past 35 years.

Advocate Nel successfully prosecuted both former South African police commissioner, Mr Jackie Selibe and South African sprit runner, Oscar Pistorious, whose murder trial was riddled with a huge component of digital evidence. ENDS