Letter from the editor: The meaning of trust

Dear News24 reader,

On Wednesday, the Reuters Institute at Oxford University released its annual survey into the trust citizens place in media institutions. For the fourth year in a row, News24 came out tops as South Africa's most trusted news source.

This is not an accolade we take lightly.

Trust is a journalist's most valuable currency. It is hard, even impossible, to regain if you lose it. Go ask those so-called journalists who to this day persist with their story that a woman gave birth to 10 babies without a single doctor or hospital knowing about it.

Will anyone trust them again?

When News24's editors decided to change our slogan to "Trusted News. First", it was done with a single-minded intent and purpose: to hold ourselves to account, every day, with every story we do.

Trusted journalism doesn't mean reporting what someone said on Twitter or WhatsApp. Here, at News24, when we receive voice notes claiming that the Russians are sending an army of weapons our way, that another booze ban is on the cards, or that Covid-19 vaccinations radiate 5G (or was it 3G?), we pause and investigate.

What are the facts? Who is this person? And what is their agenda?

Ultimately, trust is not just something you can blindly claim or flaunt, but an earned respect based on repeated experience of fact-based reporting and analysis.

Trust is financial journalist Jan Cronjé's dogged investigation into bitcoin trader Johann Steynberg and MTI.

Trust is writer-at-large Carol Paton's refusal to accept the government's explanations for bailing out SAA yet again.

Trust is the three-month investigation by Tammy Petersen and Deon Wiggett into the "Melkbos Monster", Marius Pistorius, who allegedly sexually abused toddlers at his wife's pre-school in the Western Cape.

And trust is sending our legal specialist writer, Karyn Maughan, to Dubai to see for herself what is happening with the Gupta brothers' extradition application.

By subscribing to News24, you strengthen our ability to hold power to account in the public interest. It is an honour and privilege we don't take for granted.

Thank you for trusting us.

Adriaan Basson

Editor-in-chief