Parliament, Friday 28 January 2022 – Parliament rejects with contempt a news article, titled "Parliament's botched digitisation may mean millions of precious documents were lost in the fire", which was published today by GroundUp and News24. Parliament will officially lodge a complaint to the press ombudsman on this matter.
The article, which was written by James Stent, a journalist for GroundUp, violated fundamental rules of journalism provided for in the Press Code, and makes a mockery of the established principles of acceptable media practice.
Despite sending Parliament a detailed list of questions on the effect of fire on the historical documents of Parliament, and being provided with comprehensive responses to each of those questions within the agreed deadline, the journalist and GroundUp opted to deny Parliament’s right to respond in the story by glaringly ignoring and omitting all the replies provided.
Hellbent on pursuing solely their own narrative, Mr Stent and GroundUp could not stand a contradictory view to their erroneous inventions. It has also come to our attention that GroundUp also suppressed the responses of one of the companies that provided the scanning services to Parliament, I-Kno, despite a detailed clarification provided to their questions.
Since the fire outbreak, Parliament has been consistent in its communication that historical documents were digitised and backup of critical parliamentary documents made. Mr Stent and GroundUp’s insistence that documents were lost, and even going the desperate lengths of concealing the responses provided to him, beggars belief and smacks of the worst type of unethical journalism.
Parliament has no reason to hide the details of damage caused by the fire, which is yet to be assessed fully. If these historical documents were destroyed in the fire, as GroundUp and Mr Stent so desperately wants the public to believe, we would have said so.
Chapter 1 of the Press Code of Ethics and Conduct for South African Print and Online Media states clearly that the media shall “take care to report news truthfully, accurately and fairly; and “present news in context and a balanced manner, without any intentional or negligent departure from the facts whether by distortion, exaggeration or misrepresentation, material omissions, or summarisation”.
By publishing a story that is not truthful, inaccurate and biased, and which lacks necessary balance by omitting response from the subject of negative reporting, both Mr Stent and GroundUp are guilty of dishonest journalism. Chapter 1 of the Code states that media must "seek, if practicable, the views of the subject of critical reportage in advance of publication, except when they might be prevented from reporting, or evidence destroyed, or sources intimidated."
Parliament will complain with the Ombudsman regarding this unethical news reporting, and calls for publications that are carrying this story to insist with GroundUp that all necessary journalistic safeguards are adhered to.
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Below are ignored responses emailed to GroundUp:
MEDIA INQUIRY GROUND UP: 26 JANUARY 2022
QUESTION: Might you be able to confirm the price of the contract given to I-Kno as R16 million?
ANSWER: The total value of the contract was R4 863 475.44 (Excl. VAT). The Project was closed in September 2017. The Close-out report acknowledged that approximately 4,65% of the work was not delivered to Parliament. It was thus agreed to withhold the 20% retainer (R1,108,872.40 Incl. VAT) in the allocated budget of the project, which was thus not paid to I-Kno.
QUESTION: Can you confirm that Mr Ntunja recorded this project as being complete?
ANSWER: Yes, the project was closed in September 2017, however scanners were purchased as part of the overall Library Upgrade Project and internal staff were trained on digitization including quality assurance. This provided an opportunity for the work to be absorbed to line function and be part of the ongoing work of the Library.
QUESTION: Are you able to confirm precisely how much of the digitised archive has been quality checked and is free of error?
ANSWER: During the running of the project, the management of the Library identified the need to implement a second-tier quality assurance process by internal library staff, to ensure the quality of the digitized content received from I-Kno. It was agreed that a 30% random sample of materials scanned would undergo this 2nd level quality check with an acceptable error rate of 10%. Scanned materials that were assessed with an error rate of above the 10% threshold were returned to the service provider for re-scanning.
It should be noted that the library staff was very stringent on the 10% error, using absolute numbers up to 2 decimal places (e.g. if an acceptable error was 27,96 and the actual error was 28, this was deemed unacceptable and returned to the service provider). The error rate during the operations of the project (i.e. the ‘working’ error through quality assurance) was therefore exaggerated.
Various quality shortfalls/errors were correctly revealed and highlighted as part of the quality assurance process and solutions devised to address these as part of the project implementation and internal management controls. Re-scanned materials returned to Parliament were not re-checked and a final error rate was not determined. Library statistics confirmed that 95,35% of digitized materials were delivered to Parliament.
QUESTION: Were the problems in the digitised archives reported to either of you?
ANSWER: The operations of the project were managed within the line function of the Library as per Parliament’s Human resources policies.
A Control Librarian was assigned responsibility for quality assurance and reported to the Chief Librarian. Matters that required specific intervention were escalated to the Division Manager:KISD. Internal operational reports and management reports were submitted monthly. These are intended for trouble-shooting, mitigation/corrective action and performance improvement.
QUESTION: Can you confirm that the archival collections are currently inaccessible and have possibly been destroyed by the fire or water?
ANSWER: Currently the area destroyed by fire is inaccessible as it is still a crime scene and investigation is still taking place. Therefore, Parliament cannot at this stage confirm if the archival collections have been destroyed by fire or water.
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