This is a continuation of my occasional review of South African media.
MyBroadband is a site that focuses on IT and technology. It started as a discussion forum but later included news and information (this review is not about the forum, though). It's sister site is BusinessTech.
It mostly posts informational reviews and articles on IT but more general interest matters too, e.g. the pandemic and economy/business.
Its content, about half of which are advertorials, or "partner content", is a combination of news, information and opinion. The problem, like South African media in general, is it frequently breaches the inviolable wall between news/information and opinion.
At times MyBroadband presents false, inaccurate or tendentious information to deliberately promote a view or interest, or by accident and sloppy journalism - ignorance of the topic, little to no research or fact-checking, lack of objectivity and balance and appeal to authority - that is another feature of South African media.
Examples are its comparison this week of Openview's and DSTV's offering in which it falsely stated the Openview decoder is R1 599 and DSTV's R599 making the latter an apparent better choice (DSTV is a subscription service; Openview free). But Openview's decoder is on sale at many retailers for R599. They appeared to be touting for DSTV as they've done before for its sister company News24.
Another example of pandering to advertisers is its recent article about the US' ban on Huawei under the heading "Africa must make up its own mind" about the company. In the second section it ran a lengthy statement by Huawei's South African marketing director Hongjie Yang in which he reiterated Africa must make its own decision about American, British and others' allegations the company poses a security risk because of its ties to the Chinese government. He listed Huawei's work in SA and Africa developing and building its cellular including 5G infrastructure.
While this may be true, the second part of the article had little direct relevance to the first. Despite saying Africa must make up its own mind, the article lacked balance. MyBroadband didn't mention or explore, because Hongjie obviously wouldn't, that inter alia by law Chinese companies must work with national intelligence.
It came across as marketing and an apologia for Huawei which advertises in MyBroadband via partner content. Although it didn't say so, it likely was paid content.
Even its reviews and reports of non-controversial tech topics reveal problems of poor, naive or superficial - non-interrogatory - journalism and analysis. MyBroadband shares with most SA media its sensitivity to criticism of or disagreeing with its opinion, interpretation of the facts and approach especially when it's wrong or makes mistakes, as they often do. It disallows and removes commentary, including what it perceives to be but may not be negative comments, particularly when it concerns its advertisers' products. (Disclosure: I posted comments there.)
MyBroadband is an advertiser-orientated trade/marketing publication with a bit of news and it shows by its bias and appeal to authority. Its standard is typical of South African journalism - mediocre. While the information it presents is at times useful and interesting, its content, writing and analyses is of low to adequate standard, superficial and at times naive. There are better sites for the discerning reader and follower of IT, for one Techradar which has a South African edition.
So, beyond that narrow range, MyBroadband cannot be trusted.
Comments
Post a Comment