Let me say this upfront. We were wrong to have illustrated a story with a photograph that was not a true representation of the product that we wrote about.
There are no good enough excuses for it. Not even the one offered by the deputy editor of our SuccessDigest Extra!, Mr. Hope Eno. So, as far as the charge brought against us by Mr. Glory Bimbo, we were guilty as charged.
All I’m out to do in the following paragraphs is to enter a plea for leniency. And as I cannot be a judge in my own case, I’ll leave you, my reader, to either convict or discharge and acquit us as your lordship pleases.
Once upon a long time ago –– how long ago was that? As long as September 1995 when the first edition of SuccessDigest magazine was published, we were faced with a serious challenge: lack of appropriate photographs to illustrate our stories.
We were having roughly 68 pages per each edition at the time and you could count the number of illustrations, cartoons and all, on the fingers of both hands and still have some to spare. The pages were usually so dense with words that many of our readers complained loudly that it was turning them off.
Readers of our ground-breaking magazine at the time would testify to this fact. And I wish right now that I can get some of them to stand in the witness box to give evidence for or against my claim.
As time went on, we began to make adjustments. And that brought us to where we are today. What many of our readers didn’t know at the time was that very few of the people we wrote about were willing to allow us to use their photographs.
In some other cases, we just had no way of describing what we were writing about than to use word pictures. That was our history.
But gradually, we discovered the Internet. And we found sources where you could get photographs, including illustrations, which you were given permission to use freely. You’ve got to be careful of lifting photographs online without permission or else you will run foul of intellectual properties laws.
This discovery has helped us to add a few illustrations to our publication. And it has been a relief to us and our readers. More cheering is the fact that unlike in the time past, the people we interview today are more open and willing not only to share their ideas with us but also to identify with the publication.
Thank you P-E-R-S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E!
With that said, what was our motive for using that stove story and, for that matter, rushing to the newsstand with a picture that was not the exact image of the product we wrote about?
Our motive was to bring to the attention of our numerous readers, a product that they could sell and earn income from. Pure and simple!
The product owners didn’t pay us for advertisement. There was no direct financial benefit to SADC for running that story and using that picture other than the one already given. Our readers’ interest was our prime motive in this case as in every story that we publish.
Their success is what drives us. It’s our reason for being in existence. Their joy is our joy. We shall never go out of our way to cause them pain. Never!
Finally, what should we have done and, most importantly, will this ever happen again?
As it’s obvious that we cannot always have pictures to illustrate some of our stories, what we ought to have done was to simply state clearly in the caption of the photograph that it was not the actual picture of the product written about and to indicate the source of the picture.
If we had done that, we would have saved ourselves the embarrassment that this caused us.
And as for whether it will happen again, I can confidently declare that it will not. A great lesson has been learnt by our editorial team. We are sorry that this happened in the first place. Such a mistake shall never happen again.
