Another easy starting point is to take what has been reported previously as our background information. This is crippling the industry as it prompts journalists to ‘thumb suck’ stories, especially if they are relying on information sourced from social networking sites.

In a nutshell, journalists prefer ‘armchair journalism’ because it is not easy to go out and cover a story in the field, where one needs strong cross-platform journalistic skills in order to interview, report back, write, edit, blog about and record your own work. Some newsrooms save on the costs of travelling to cover stories, where journalists write a story depending on the opinions of others who were are the scene.

Brenda Norrell writes on infoshop, news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20071002115402704 that armchair journalism can be seen as plagiarism. “Some reporters have actually based their article on another reporter's work. Those are carefully rewritten, to disguise the truth. Some reporters have done this type of parasitic reporting for decades. Ask around, has anyone actually ever seen this reporter out on a news story?” asks Norrell.

Caxton News Journalist, Anda Mbikwana, says that to be a cross-platform journalist requires a certain skill, which is currently lacking in the industry. “In journalism you need… commitment to cover certain stories which are difficult; stories which happen when you have not prepared for them,” he said.

Mbikwana says that cross-platform journalism is tough and that journalists need to have proper training and good supporting editors to embark on it. “Not everyone will be able to write their story and be able to remain objective while subbing it, you have to have some sort of help from sub-editors,” he said.

“I think the problem is that most journalists now want to tell us information that they have gathered from someone else. How can you comment about a soccer game when you only saw highlights of it, to people who saw the full 90 minutes of the game? Armchair journalism is killing the industry and those participating in it are destroying their credibility,” said Mbikwana.

YFM Sports Editor, Thato Moeng, says that armchair journalism is becoming part and parcel of the media industry because of deadlines and the nature of the industry itself. “In the newsroom, there are serious deadlines and when you get a press release, you might not have time to verify the facts if something big happens. I prefer to always try and keep information that I get from PRs short and simple so that I don’t mislead who ever will be listening to me,” said Moeng.

Moeng says that every journalist must have an ability to perform cross-platform journalism. “I think that armchair journalism can cripple one’s career as it promotes laziness and the inability to think on your feet. Cross-platform journalism is not as tough as most people make it out to be, in the field you need to arm yourself with background information so that you know what is happening and you will be in the position to ask the right questions. I think most people find it hard to be their own critics and in most cases, they are subjective and forget their target audience,” Moeng said.

Business Report Journalist, Dineo Matomela, adds that it is easy to fall prey to the trap of armchair journalism. “As a journalist, you are bombarded with a lot of press releases and in most cases, the PR companies will only tell the good stuff (that their company has been doing, they won’t tell you of the negative stuff that their company has been doing.) Most journalists fall prey to this as they only publish the article without doing their own research or going out and getting a second opinion,” said Matomela.

Going to a story and covering the event, taking pictures and interacting with the people at the story really helps the reporter to put in the element of ‘real’ towards the story and it becomes more believable and boosts your credibility to write a story unlike it being unrealistic and based only on press releases.

Do you think that current media in the country is practicing arm chair journalism? Share your thoughts by commenting on our blog.