Abstract
This study is situated at the intersection of fake news and the daily news production practices of mainstream media journalists in Zimbabwe during the November 2017 ‘soft coup’. There is a paucity of research on journalists’ responses to fake news, during military coups, despite increasing research on the influence of fake news on traditional news production practices. Conceptualised on social organisation of news work, the study deploys qualitative interviews with purposively selected political reporters from mainstream daily newspapers, to explore how they responded to fake news during the coup. The study found out that faced with an avalanche of fake news, journalists responded by re-evaluating their news sourcing routines and engaged in collective efforts to identify sources and pressure points of fake news that interfered with their work. Yet, overt reliance on unreliable websites and social media sources to produce news still persisted. Based on this and other related findings, we recommend that journalists should evolve their own platforms and mechanisms to verify and challenge fake news prevalent on social media and websites. We further recommend a “triangular approach” that can, in the long term, reduce the influence of fake news.