The controversial fake decuplets story has been struck off the International News Media Awards’ (INMA) nominations roll, according to one of the judges, Thomas Blaekdal, who is outraged the story made it to the shortlist.
On Wednesday, the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) called out the awards’ organisers for entertaining the story.
Sanef said in a statement it was outraged that the Independent Media’s fake story about the birth of 10 babies had somehow made it to the shortlist of the INMA awards. The story was competing under the “Best Use of Social Media” category and the organisers responded to Sanef’s concerns by saying they had looked at the social media campaign around the story and not the actual facts of the story.
In a series of tweets on Thursday, Blaekdal agreed that the story should be invalidated.
He wrote: “As a jury, we presume that all the information provided to us is accurate, both in terms of the result and the entry itself. We do this simply because there is no way that we can judge the faithfulness. We have to trust what we are told.
“Still, as a jury, we have the responsibility to not only judge the result, but also how it was achieved. For instance, I disqualified two entries in the category that I was judging because the approach they had used was hostile to the reader.
“So, when we now hear that an entry was made up, and the result was achieved based on untruthfulness … and worse, this entry needs to be disqualified.”
Baekdal also confirmed that he consulted his contacts at INMA to have the nomination withdrawn and disqualified, saying this nomination disreputes everyone involved from INMA as an organisation and its juries.
“The entry has been removed [note that I don’t know when they did this … the decision might have been made before I tweeted this).”
Also read: Sanef outraged fake decuplets story is shortlisted for global award
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