ITWeb's Editorial Policy

Focused on providing industry news to South Africa’s ICT community and founded in 1996, ITWeb is a pioneer in the country’s online news industry. ITWeb prides itself on following the ethical principles of news journalism and abides by the Press Council of South Africa’s Code of Ethics and Conduct for South African Print and Online Media.

The mission of ITWeb’s news division is to inform South Africa’s business technology community of the current events, issues, opinions and trends that shape it, in a fair, accurate and timely manner.

In striving for editorial excellence to inform the professional ICT reader, our values are:

• Trust, truth and accuracy: ITWeb is committed to high journalistic standards, which include factual reporting, supported by rigorous verification, corroboration of sources, thorough research, and careful fact-checking.
• Integrity and authenticity: ITWeb is dedicated to original content creation, with attribution of sources, and a strong stance on plagiarism and AI-generated content.
• Fairness and balance: ITWeb is committed to ensuring that its reporting covers a diverse range of viewpoints and its coverage does not skew in favour of a particular voice or political party.
• Independence and impartiality: ITWeb exerts editorial freedom reporting on key news issues in a neutral way, without fear or favour.
• Expertise and authority: With a long history of covering the diverse part of the South African ICT ecosystem, ITWeb has an excellent understanding of the business technology environment.

With a long-held and consistent reputation in the South African ICT community, ITWeb has built a position of trust across the industry due to its commitment to reporting news fairly, accurately and with impartiality. With ethical principles ingrained in its newsroom, the organisation does not distort, exaggerate or misrepresent facts in its news reporting.

ITWeb acts in the interests of society at large and endeavours to report news truthfully, accurately and with fairness and balance. In reporting on stories, the organisation seeks to break news stories, provide an original take and present a diversity of views to cover the different sides of an issue and ensure factual accuracy.

ITWeb’s editorial decisions are made based on news merit, ensuring readers get the information they need, from across the industry. Rigorous and robust discussions are held by senior editorial staff to rule on any concerns regarding the validity or angle of a particular news story. In making such decisions, ITWeb’s editorial staff is free from outside influence.

The organisation’s editorial staff exercise care, consideration and takeefforts to verify sources, corroborate facts through thorough research, and report without fear or favour. ITWeb uses strong editorial oversight to ensure there is no defamation.

As a leading industry voice and established news source, and adhering to the highest journalistic standards, ITWeb seeks to provide original, quality content. It exercises policies to avoid plagiarism, and attributes any third-party sources fairly and with due credit, where used.

To provide transparency, ITWeb avoids quoting anonymous sources of information. The organisation does however uphold the principle of journalistic freedom and protects confidential sources of information, where appropriate, in investigative reporting.

ITWeb acts with honesty and integrity when it is sourcing, processing and reporting news. Its content is carefully edited to be clear, concise, easy to understand and follows an internally developed style guide, honed over many years. News headlines accurately reflect the content of the articles and ‘click bait’ is not an acceptable ITWeb practice.