If you happen to spend a fair amount of time checking in on the news, you’ll know the names of most of our country’s leading sites.

Congratulations, that makes you a discerning internet user – but not everyone manages to sniff out the nonsense.

We told you a while back about the ’80 000 ballot papers’ story (HERE), shared thousands of times across social media before anyone thought to check for a more reputable source.

Now there’s a new troublemaker out there, a site called City Sun. Turns out there might be an ulterior motive to the content on the site, something the Mail & Guardian pointed out in a recent piece:

It looks like a news website. It has headlines, blurbs of text and even a news ticker (that bar that runs across TV and computer screens with the latest news). But it’s really a place where many South Africans are being trolled…

So, here’s what we’ve figured out about City Sun so far:

It likes to throw shade at white people.

Like the story about white Democratic Alliance (DA) supporters threatening DA leader Mmusi Maimane if he chats with the EFF about coalitions.

It doesn’t like the DA.

It’s probably the only website that has posted about the DA losing out in local government elections, when the rest of South Africa has been blinking at their screens, watching the party gain power in metropolitans.

It also reported that the DA would cut free wi-fi in townships around Nelson Mandela Bay. The post was published before the party even officially won the municipality, although it states that the DA had already won the most votes.

It also doesn’t like the EFF.

In fact it published one real piece about the EFF, and that was Andile Mngxitama’s letter to the EFF, telling them to steer clear of making deals with the DA in coalition season.

Others have been posts about how the EFF would report Baleka Mbete, speaker of the National Assembly, to its wealthy funders, Nathan Kirsch and Lord Robin Renwick. (There’s been speculation that the party received funding from Kirsch, but these have been unfounded.

It loves the ANC.

With headlines like “Election results 2016 – ANC wins elections in final polls” and “S&P rating agency commends ANC government On Eskom”, the site clearly has a good story to tell (heh heh heh). There’s very little criticism of the ruling party, but a whole lot of praise.

It turns out City Sun don’t take criticism very well, because they hit back in a piece titled ‘City Sun Responds To Mail & Guardian Cowardice‘.

Let’s examine the mature response below:

The report shows that you are suffering from a decline of 15% overall. May be you need to learn how to run a good social media campaign and City Sun can share some skills to help you out on this one…

City Sun is an internet based newspaper with a very strong social media knowledge which is why we triple your readership and our content is shared more than twice as compared to yours. You must ask City Sun about how to get M&G ranking well on search engines because that will drive more traffic to your website…

This is a clear indication that people of South Africa are hungry for alternative news publishers and are tired of reading propaganda aimed at promoting faulty ideas of white opposition. We know that the majority of newspapers are white owned and there is no objectivity one can expect anyway. City Sun is here to provide that alternative to news readers.

Our Facebook page called City Sun receives so many inbox messages coming from readers. It is very strange comments that contain insults and all forms of vulgar language are coming from white readers. We are being insulted for facilitating a view that is different from the one championed by biased newspapers that are hellbent to seeing the ANC government failing.

Do we need a plurality of voices in the South African media spectrum? Of course we do, but we also need sites that are held accountable for spreading falsities.

Maybe, at the end of the day, the onus falls on those who share these posts to sift through the nonsense. Maybe that will be a process that people start taking a little more seriously, given that you can now face legal action for spreading mistruths.

Check this from MyBroadband:

Verlie Oosthuizen, a social media law expert…said there is a risk if a person engages in “the chain of publication”.

“When a person likes or shares a comment, they are publishing that comment once again, especially in a Facebook and social media context, as it will appear on that person’s newsfeed,” said Oosthuizen.

“In normal circumstances it may only result in defamation. However, in the election context, where there is specific legislation regarding comments about elections, votes, and political parties, there may be statutory liability,” she said.

This means that anyone who shares or likes a dubious Facebook post could face legal action as part of the “chain of publication”.

Maybe that will be the kick up the backside that people need to do a little background check before sharing, although I wouldn’t hold my breath.

[sources:mg&citysun]