Journalism is about Checking the Facts before publication.

Who is a Journalist ?

I need to start with a disclaimer: I have a dog in the race I am about to bet on. I am a board member of Africa Check, the fact-checking operation that runs from our journalism department at Wits University.
Africa Check promotes slow journalism: before your rush into print or on air, take a deep breath and make sure you have double-checked your facts. If you don’t, there are a bunch of pedants who will be onto you, investigating where you sourced any facts and whether they stand up to scrutiny, and publishing it all on a website. They do the same for public figures: check out party manifestoes in elections, President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address and Western Cape Premier Helen Zille’s provincial one.

 

They are scrupulously nonpartisan, pointing out when the details are correct as often as when they are wrong. They took on the New York Times and showed that their source for a claim that there were 5-million illegal immigrants in SA was dubious, at best.
Sometimes they even have fun, checking out April Fools claims, or whether Joburg is in fact "the biggest man-made forest in the world". (It isn’t.) We all make mistakes, particularly at the kind of speed news travels at these days. Smart people apologise and fix it quickly (though the New York Times, famous for once correcting a misspelt name in a theatre review 60 years after the error, didn’t).

Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, discovers 600 unpaid Pensioners after Verification Exercise

Custom, other retirees express satisfaction

The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has, after its verification exercise for retired Police officials, discovered 600 pensioners that had never received any payment since retirement.

Nellie Mayshak, director-general of PTAD, who disclosed this to journalists in Lagos, described the development as unjust.

PTAD

Consequently, the Directorate promised that these retirees were going to be paid all their money immediately.

“On the good side, there were 600 pensioners that had never received any payment since they retired, which is unjust. So, we are quickly going to pay those people. Through the process, we have seen that some people are underpaid while some are overpaid, and so we are adjusting all that,” she said.

Presently, the verification exercise for Customs, Immigration and Prisons pensioners is ongoing. The exercise is being carried out in 13 centres across the country – Rivers, Edo, Cross River, Enugu, Imo, Lagos, Oyo, Kano, Sokoto, Bauchi, FCT, Kwara, and Benue.