What makes people weak? Their need for validation and recognition, their need to feel important. Don’t get caught in this trap. - Paulo Coelho

I don’t need your validation to know that my opinions have value. Their very existence and origin is value enough.

I don’t need to please you to know that I’m great and important and making an impact. I don’t need you to tell me my worth, because I know what I’m worth, and that’s a hell of a lot more than your opinion is worth to me.

I know who I am. I know what I’m about. I know my principles, my values and my valuables. I may not agree with your opinions, but I will vigorously advocate and defend your right to hold them. Show me the same courtesy.

If I say something, that’s not an invitation for you to either agree or contradict. Sometimes, it’s okay to just accept.

If my family want to judge my decisions, they can.

If my friends want to judge my opinions, they can.

If my blog audience wants to judge my writings, they can.

I’ve basically mastered the art of acceptance, and will not let the judgements of others get to me.

I’m not going to waste time caring what you think, because in the end, I don’t give a fuck.

It’s my life.

Following my exposure of H-Metro’s fake lead story on Thursday, the newspaper has owned up to the facts today.

I do not believe in a centrally-regulated media, where journalism is criminalised. I believe in a code of media ethics, in self-regulation and responsible resolution of issues.

One of the issues of self-regulation is the notion that a correction should be commensurate with the original error. So, if the error occurs on page one, then the correction should be given similar prominence.

H-Metro obviously don’t.

Instead of apologising for a publishing a false story, and explaining whether they were hoodwinked or simply created it, they are trying to spin the whole issue as a social media lesson.

Their editorial talks about how members of the public should beware when faced with social media profiles. At no point do they discuss how they rushed to print this story before checking the facts.

Likewise, the actual story seems like an exercise in deflection, where they talk about doing a “forensic probe” on Friday (a day after publication) only to discover that the pictures were fake.

My first problem is this; how do you launch a “forensic probe” into a lead story after the fact? That is admitting that your stories are both poorly-researched and subjected to poor editorial scrutiny.

If you tell me that Nigel Pfunde managed to get this story on the front page simply by submitting it, then you have a very poor way of managing your newspaper. What evidence did he provide to the editor that his story was true? A Facebook profile? Or maybe he didn’t even have to.

Secondly, now that you know the story is fake, is it beneath you to offer a complete retraction? It’s well and good to bitch about being hoodwinked in an editorial. It’s fine to write a story laying out the actual facts.

But at no point does H-Metro issue a mea culpa; saying sorry for publishing false information is BASIC, but even the basics seem to be lost on these guys.

The positive outcome here is that whatever shred of credibility this tabloid rag had left is now gone, and people see it for what it is. H-Metro is a lie-peddler, and if they can publish something as false as this, what else have they been lying about?

They’ll lose readership for this, and all the better. Until some semblance of ethics and basic common sense enter their newsroom, they have no right to call H-Metro a newspaper.

Who’s exposed now?

So H-Metro is rubbish – we all know that. The problem is, we tend to believe the stuff we see in it. That’s because some of their stories are straight out of the court record, and they’re funny as hell. So we read it. And some of us actually buy it.

Today’s H-Metro, though, has a blatantly fake front-page story, and a sharp-eyed workmate (with the memory of an elephant, apparently) clued us in.

In 2009 a scandal broke out in Tanzania. See, there was this website called zeutamu.com which used to, well, do tabloid shit. They posted naked and compromising pictures of celebs and politicians, but many of these were Photoshop jobs.

The last straw was when they did this to President Kikwete, and were promptly shut down and the owner arrested (in Essex, UK). By Interpol, no less.

Right. So in today’s headline story, H-Metro claim there’s a Zimbabwean woman named Caroline Masaraure who posts naked pictures to her Facebook. She’s allegedly also a member of UFI Ministries, founded by the infamous “Prophet” Emmanuel Makandiwa. Irrelevant, but there you go.

Now, barring the fact that naked pictures don’t last a day on Facebook, one of the photos has “Caroline” posing with a girl my mate had seen before.

On zeutamu.com, no less.

BUT, and here’s the big butt, we did find other pics and discussions of the other girl in the photos. After a lot (I mean, a lot) of research, we eventually found out that the light girl is named Nsia Swai, she is indeed Tanzanian, she’s kind of a celebrity, she sued 5 tabloids because of these pictures, and H-Metro is full of shit.

So what’s the story here? Did H-Metro reporter Nigel Pfunde do this himself, create a fake person and mould a tabloid story around it, so they could sell newspapers with naked girls on the front?

Or did someone create a fake Facebook profile and hoodwink H-Metro into believing this hogwash?

Either way, that’s fucked up.

No words necessary.

So ZESA is gone again. The office is quiet. I’m doodling on my iPad. Queue Angry Birds – Zim edition. Sigh.