Bus driver, Twitter Space and missing links in online stories

A reader (name withheld) called me on May 16 with many questions about the Sunday Monitor story, “Link Bus driver story leaves many puzzled” Link Bus driver story leaves many puzzled (Sunday Monitor May 15, page 4). He raised the following broad issues:

-He was puzzled at the amount of space given to the story when to him it seemed a public relations (PR) story aimed at cleaning up the image of the bus company and the driver who had “killed” 21 people in a road accident. That this story was insensitive to the families that have been affected by this tragedy.

-In the story, only the employer, friends of the deceased and some quotes from the minister of Transport were carried. There were no voices of the survivors in the bus on the fateful day or eye-witnesses yet they are available.

-That the accident was not just caused by human error in overtaking at a dangerous spot as implied in the story but also by speeding which is not a “human error” but a notorious characteristic of bus drivers and that the speed of 99kph captured on police camera speaks as much. Instead, he said, the story attempts to whitewash the speeding issue by trying to show the driver was a first offender; that he was always slow because his friends and employer say so.

-What was the story supposed to achieve i.e. “the so what?” of the story? He said nowhere does the story try to preach adherence to rules of driving like speed limit, not overtaking at blind spots, etc. Instead, he said, this was simply a colourful eulogy of the driver labeled news.

I read the story carefully and agree almost entirely with the issues he raised. So was the story insensitive? Could the story have been done better? The answer to both is no and this is because the reader and editor/writer perceived the story from completely opposite directions. The reader from the perspective of the accident victims, and the editor/writer from the perspective of the driver’s family and associates. So it was a eulogy of the bus driver rather than a news story or analysis of the accident.

The story fulfilled what it set out to do in the headline and intro. The reader would perhaps have looked at it differently had it not been labeled news. And that is where the editor may take some flak. When a page is labeled news, a reader expects news. When it is labeled features, a reader expects to read feature articles. When it is labeled sports, a reader expects to read sports stories. When it is labeled business, a reader expects business stories.

This page should therefore have been labeled “Obituary”, “Tribute” or “Eulogy”. Then the reader would have been better prepared for the content; reading it with that perspective in mind. Again, sensitivity to the families of the victims could have been factored in the timing of publishing the tribute. But these are judgment calls that are not always in black and white.

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Sseruwagi Moses: Sometime in March 2022, Mr Raymond Mujuni held a first if its kind Twitter Space discussing Daily Monitor reporting of that week’s lead story about torture. He promised that it would take place every week on Friday, but the next week it didn’t take place and has not happened again. I am kindly inquiring whether this brilliant initiative suffered the stillbirth Ugandan businesses tend to suffer from?

Public Editor: Raymond indeed did host a successful Twitter Space discussion as part of testing the possibilities available to legacy media in the digital space. The numbers were good and he appreciates this feedback. There is, however, some back-end work being done by the brand on this tried and tested opportunity before the decision to go full throttle.

Atujune Dragan: Refer to your story, “Mother-to-child HIV transmission rates drop – report” (Daily Monitor, June 1). I wonder why @Daily Monitor never includes external links to such reports in such articles. Is it against your editorial policies? @cbichachi

Public Editor: Thank you for this feedback. Ideally @DailyMonitor should include these links as a value add for readers online that may wish to pursue further information in the report. This is the beauty. The NMG Editorial Policy Guidelines allows for dynamism in online publishing which the editors should exploit. I shall share this feedback with the editors to inform future online engagement.

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