Good afternoon. This week, the Mozambican media has been keenly reporting a letter from aluminium maker Mozal to the Attorney-General’s Office, rejecting any suggestion that its decision to shut down its aluminium smelter was not taken lawfully. The letter was reported in state-controlled daily newspaper Notícias, before being picked up by website Diario Econômico and newssheet Mediafax. The only problem is that the letter was fake. A good look at it should have at least alerted a sensible person, never mind a journalist, to this possibility. The logo used was not Mozal’s logo and the formatting was odd. Nevertheless, the letter was reported on as if it were genuine.
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It is another embarrassing episode for the Mozambican media, which in general is not known for its high editorial standards. Quite often this newsletter has to correct, if not completely reject, stories published by Mozambican news outlets which contain inaccuracies or are based on briefings from unreliable people. There are some good journalists out there, but news outlets generally suffer from a lack of resources, so that there are not many people and not much time to check stories. Notícias did not check the letter with Mozal before publishing the story.
