Politicsweb's editor and publisher James Myburgh has had a disagreement with Africa Check's fact-checking about (white) farm murders this year. In four articles - here, here, here and the latest, The Africa Checkists on November 28 - he disputed Africa Check's findings and/or interpretation of the number of farm murders (and here).
This is a cause célèbre and obsession for Myburgh. I know the feeling, but sometimes one must let it go.
First, Africa Check and their researcher on farm murders Kate Wilkinson are media and writers and not economists, sociologists, statisticians and demographers. They rely on second-hand data they source elsewhere (as Myburgh has). My point is while journalists are trained in research, they don't have unique, expert insight into a subject or the competence to interpret and analyse specialised data. They must defer to that expertise when necessary.
When AC published this article researched by Gopolang Makou, Did the DA create 75% of all jobs in SA, I had a problem with their analysis. In its way it repeated DA leader's Mmusi Maimane's frequent fallacious and economically ignorant claims about the DA's alleged success in 'creating jobs' in the Western Cape (as I also wrote on PW).
Both AC and Maimane misunderstand the word "creation" in the macroeconomic sense and use it bluntly in its most simplistic, and incorrect, interpretation without context of macroeconomic growth and unemployment and population growth and changes. Note AC asked a UCT economist for an opinion who cautioned against misunderstanding economic concepts and attributing job creation to simplistic factors, which I also noted.
AC invites comments and I emailed my problems with their interpretation of the data. Unbeknown to me, that day they had withdrawn the article for re-checking but reposted confirming it as "correct". But their causal fallacy remained, the very reason the UCT economist warned against. They didn't post my comment/criticism (they did others', though).
To this issue, Wilkinson is a mere media writer/researcher. According to her LinkedIn page, she has a first class honours in international relations from UCT (2011) and has worked entirely in media and marketing. She's been at AC since 2013. Arguably, Myburgh's (PhD, Oxon) research is as good if not better than hers.
Therefore, on this subject, neither AC nor Wilkinson are sufficiently qualified to declare themselves the absolute authority they claim and other media organisations deem them to be. The truth about the numbers probably lie in the median somewhere.
As I've said before, perhaps the only reliable and credible assessment will be if independent, suitably qualified researchers with adequate time available - not people whose main job is writing to media deadlines - conduct a proper survey and/or desktop study of available data and publish their results in a journal.
But I suspect this is not a subject particularly South Africa's left-orientated academics and researchers relish. They'd rather publish nonsense "research" like how hipsters, with their affection for antiques and Victoriana, are the new "colonials" and are "causing harm" (this really is the subject of a Wits researcher published on The Conversation Africa).
I'm not sure about a "denial" whites are the target of crime is the purpose behind AC's and other media's understating the number of farmers murder, though. I think the truth or fact of the matter is between the two points of view - Myburgh's, etc and Africa Check's, etc given that government and its agencies are vacillating or dissembling over the number.
That government has apparently not determined it conclusively - given the different data or interpretations of that data Myburgh and AC refer to - is perhaps because it's a genie they don't want to let out similar to their denials social conditions are as bad as we think it is. Remember, they're in the "good news" business of calming an idiot population of believers and those who want to believe despite the evidence around them. Both of these categories include the captured media since bf 1994 by the left's and ANC's PC and agenda-driven narrative.
Media organisations' credibility is often undeserved or exaggerated (see my other posts on the subject). For the reasons above, SA's media have none left. I don't know why AC has the credibility it either claims for itself or accorded it. After all, they're just journalists with non-specialist, at best graduate level research abilities. They're not an academic research unit. Most of their research is desk-top with some direct questioning of sources and experts for opinions if necessary. They don't generate their own evidence/data of the facts they're checking. For that they rely on second and third parties and provide links to that evidence.
As such, I'd rather use and interpret the original source data and use AC's as a summary if I've time constraints. In other words, like the media they are, they're reporting second or even third hand what a source said. In court their 'evidence' - no, let's call it by its real name, reportage - would be considered hearsay and inadmissible.
What they do has some value. But as I said my problem with them is they lack the academic and expert ability to interpret and analyse what more often than not is specialised data. And they misleadingly misrepresent they have that capability. Like the economic information I mentioned above, they may draw or imply the wrong conclusions because of that lack, i.e. they're working above their competence.
Like other media sources (except the Economist Intelligence Unit and similar), I'd take what Africa Check says and evaluate it myself, and rely on data from bona fide research organisations like StatsSA, HSRC, CSIR, universities and the like.
Africa Check, which in South Africa is deemed an authority and authoritative source for a wide range of matters, is first and foremost a media organisation. And as such it may be tendentious. In a response to Myburgh on 22 November 2018, Wilkinson said, "Africa Check welcomes anyone 'fact-checking the fact-checkers' as the fact-checking process is not beyond criticism and mistakes can be made". But they ignored my comments and emails in their review and, in fact, never published them (see below). They cannot be trusted.
Postscript: Africa Check's chief editor Anim van Wyk emailed me on December 6, presumably in response to my comments to Myburgh's article (ibid), and apologised "that your comment disappeared from our back-end at the time and that we didn't respond to this email. It got overlooked in our rush to set things straight". She requested my phone number to we could talk about my criticism. I didn't respond - it was too late and wouldn't change anything. Also, her reasons seem convenient and spurious. Assuming my problems with their fact-checking was correct (it was), they ignored the very thing they say they're committed to and doing and were intent on posting their version to advance their narrative is for that day. This proves what I've been saying.
This is a cause célèbre and obsession for Myburgh. I know the feeling, but sometimes one must let it go.
First, Africa Check and their researcher on farm murders Kate Wilkinson are media and writers and not economists, sociologists, statisticians and demographers. They rely on second-hand data they source elsewhere (as Myburgh has). My point is while journalists are trained in research, they don't have unique, expert insight into a subject or the competence to interpret and analyse specialised data. They must defer to that expertise when necessary.
When AC published this article researched by Gopolang Makou, Did the DA create 75% of all jobs in SA, I had a problem with their analysis. In its way it repeated DA leader's Mmusi Maimane's frequent fallacious and economically ignorant claims about the DA's alleged success in 'creating jobs' in the Western Cape (as I also wrote on PW).
Both AC and Maimane misunderstand the word "creation" in the macroeconomic sense and use it bluntly in its most simplistic, and incorrect, interpretation without context of macroeconomic growth and unemployment and population growth and changes. Note AC asked a UCT economist for an opinion who cautioned against misunderstanding economic concepts and attributing job creation to simplistic factors, which I also noted.
AC invites comments and I emailed my problems with their interpretation of the data. Unbeknown to me, that day they had withdrawn the article for re-checking but reposted confirming it as "correct". But their causal fallacy remained, the very reason the UCT economist warned against. They didn't post my comment/criticism (they did others', though).
To this issue, Wilkinson is a mere media writer/researcher. According to her LinkedIn page, she has a first class honours in international relations from UCT (2011) and has worked entirely in media and marketing. She's been at AC since 2013. Arguably, Myburgh's (PhD, Oxon) research is as good if not better than hers.
Therefore, on this subject, neither AC nor Wilkinson are sufficiently qualified to declare themselves the absolute authority they claim and other media organisations deem them to be. The truth about the numbers probably lie in the median somewhere.
As I've said before, perhaps the only reliable and credible assessment will be if independent, suitably qualified researchers with adequate time available - not people whose main job is writing to media deadlines - conduct a proper survey and/or desktop study of available data and publish their results in a journal.
But I suspect this is not a subject particularly South Africa's left-orientated academics and researchers relish. They'd rather publish nonsense "research" like how hipsters, with their affection for antiques and Victoriana, are the new "colonials" and are "causing harm" (this really is the subject of a Wits researcher published on The Conversation Africa).
I'm not sure about a "denial" whites are the target of crime is the purpose behind AC's and other media's understating the number of farmers murder, though. I think the truth or fact of the matter is between the two points of view - Myburgh's, etc and Africa Check's, etc given that government and its agencies are vacillating or dissembling over the number.
That government has apparently not determined it conclusively - given the different data or interpretations of that data Myburgh and AC refer to - is perhaps because it's a genie they don't want to let out similar to their denials social conditions are as bad as we think it is. Remember, they're in the "good news" business of calming an idiot population of believers and those who want to believe despite the evidence around them. Both of these categories include the captured media since bf 1994 by the left's and ANC's PC and agenda-driven narrative.
Media organisations' credibility is often undeserved or exaggerated (see my other posts on the subject). For the reasons above, SA's media have none left. I don't know why AC has the credibility it either claims for itself or accorded it. After all, they're just journalists with non-specialist, at best graduate level research abilities. They're not an academic research unit. Most of their research is desk-top with some direct questioning of sources and experts for opinions if necessary. They don't generate their own evidence/data of the facts they're checking. For that they rely on second and third parties and provide links to that evidence.
As such, I'd rather use and interpret the original source data and use AC's as a summary if I've time constraints. In other words, like the media they are, they're reporting second or even third hand what a source said. In court their 'evidence' - no, let's call it by its real name, reportage - would be considered hearsay and inadmissible.
What they do has some value. But as I said my problem with them is they lack the academic and expert ability to interpret and analyse what more often than not is specialised data. And they misleadingly misrepresent they have that capability. Like the economic information I mentioned above, they may draw or imply the wrong conclusions because of that lack, i.e. they're working above their competence.
Like other media sources (except the Economist Intelligence Unit and similar), I'd take what Africa Check says and evaluate it myself, and rely on data from bona fide research organisations like StatsSA, HSRC, CSIR, universities and the like.
Africa Check, which in South Africa is deemed an authority and authoritative source for a wide range of matters, is first and foremost a media organisation. And as such it may be tendentious. In a response to Myburgh on 22 November 2018, Wilkinson said, "Africa Check welcomes anyone 'fact-checking the fact-checkers' as the fact-checking process is not beyond criticism and mistakes can be made". But they ignored my comments and emails in their review and, in fact, never published them (see below). They cannot be trusted.
Postscript: Africa Check's chief editor Anim van Wyk emailed me on December 6, presumably in response to my comments to Myburgh's article (ibid), and apologised "that your comment disappeared from our back-end at the time and that we didn't respond to this email. It got overlooked in our rush to set things straight". She requested my phone number to we could talk about my criticism. I didn't respond - it was too late and wouldn't change anything. Also, her reasons seem convenient and spurious. Assuming my problems with their fact-checking was correct (it was), they ignored the very thing they say they're committed to and doing and were intent on posting their version to advance their narrative is for that day. This proves what I've been saying.
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