News24 Makes the Smear Free and the Evidence Premium

News24 gets the political benefit of broadcasting the conclusion while the substantiation sits behind the till.

News24 wants South Africans to know that it is enormous. In June 2025, it boasted that 6.6 million users visited the site every month. Yet in the very same article, News24 said it had only just over 110,000 monthly subscribers. That does not mean only 110,000 people read News24. Much of its breaking news remains free. But it does raise an awkward question: when News24 publishes one of its subscriber-only investigations or analyses, how many of those millions can read the journalism behind the headline?

Nor is News24’s dominance quite as overwhelming once access to the content itself is considered. Maroela Media has recorded more than 36 million monthly pageviews while keeping its journalism freely accessible, Daily Maverick reaches millions without a paywall, and SABC News attracts tens of millions of monthly YouTube views. News24 may dominate conventional website rankings, but there are enormous audiences consuming competing news without having to pay to see what lies beneath the headline.

The distinction matters because News24 has a peculiar advantage. Its headlines are public. They appear on Google, Facebook, X, WhatsApp and everywhere else people encounter the news. But many of the investigations, in-depth articles and opinion pieces behind those headlines are deliberately reserved for subscribers. Media24 itself describes these categories as part of News24’s premium offering. The result is an obvious information asymmetry. The accusation is public; the evidence is private.

Consider News24’s recent investigation into AfriForum: “Inside AfriForum’s money machine: How lobby group splurges on salaries, marketing.”

The word “splurges” is doing a lot of work there. It isn’t a neutral description of expenditure. It tells readers how they should interpret the numbers before they have examined them. AfriForum didn’t merely spend money on salaries. It splurged. Yet the investigation itself is subscriber content, complete with News24’s facility for subscribers to share the article with a limited number of friends.

Maybe News24 is completely correct about AfriForum’s spending. Maybe it isn’t. (Spoiler: News24 was unconvincing.)

That isn’t even the most important issue. The problem is that a vastly larger audience can encounter the accusation than can readily inspect the case supporting it.

For many people scrolling through social media, reading Google results or seeing a screenshot shared to a group chat, the headline does not merely advertise the story. The headline is the story.

News24 gets the political benefit of broadcasting the conclusion while the substantiation sits behind the till.

And headlines matter. Research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied found that misleading headlines can affect people’s memory, reasoning, behavioural intentions and impressions, even when they subsequently read the article underneath.

In other words, framing isn’t harmless packaging. It changes how information is processed. If a headline can influence someone who reads the entire article, imagine the power it has over someone who never gets past the paywall.

This would be concerning enough from any publication. It is particularly concerning given News24’s history with AfriForum.

In 2018, the Press Ombud ruled against News24 over Pieter du Toit’s column, “The spectacular unravelling of AfriForum.” Du Toit claimed AfriForum had offered “no solutions, not a single one” on how land redress could be handled while preserving agricultural sustainability.

But Ernst Roets had provided a list of considerations during the parliamentary question-and-answer session. The Ombud found News24’s claim misleading and ordered it to apologise and publish those considerations. Other parts of AfriForum’s complaint were dismissed, but on this substantive point News24 got it wrong.

Nor is the danger of a misleading News24 headline ancient history. In 2025, the Press Council Appeals Panel upheld a finding against part of a News24 headline about Gayton McKenzie. The headline began “Send me!” despite there being no evidence that McKenzie had requested to be sent to the Paris Olympics. The panel concluded that an ordinary reader could interpret those words as a paraphrase of a request by McKenzie and ruled that this part of the headline would mislead the public. News24 was ordered to apologise.

None of this means News24 should be forced to abolish its paywall. News24 owns its journalism and has every right to charge for it. Journalism costs money, journalists need salaries and subscribers have helped finance News24’s investigations unit.

News24 editor Adriaan Basson has explicitly credited its 110,000 paid subscribers with enabling major investigations. Good. Charge away. Property rights, however, don’t grant immunity from criticism when the business model creates perverse incentives.

News24 wants two things at once. It wants the prestige and political influence that come from saying millions of South Africans use its platform, while placing much of the journalism required to interrogate its most forceful claims before a dramatically smaller paying audience. That arrangement becomes especially objectionable when loaded headlines are aimed at politically contentious targets such as AfriForum and other Afrikaner institutions. Millions may see what News24 wants them to think. Far fewer can see why News24 thinks it.

There is an easy solution. When News24 publishes an investigation making serious allegations against an identifiable person, organisation or political movement, make that investigation freely available. Keep the lifestyle pieces, analysis, commentary and other premium offerings behind the paywall if you want. But if you’re going to publicly prosecute someone, let the public see the prosecution’s case. Independent publications and alternative media increasingly compete by putting their arguments in front of readers and viewers who can examine, criticise and reject them without first handing over a credit card.

News24 has every right to criticise AfriForum, Solidarity, Afrikaners - or anyone else. It can investigate them mercilessly. But it should not expect the enormous reach of its publicly visible accusations to be confused with the reach of the journalism supposedly proving them.

If News24 wants to attack AfriForum before the whole country, it should at least have the courage to show the whole country its evidence.

Nicholas Woode-Smith is the Managing Editor of the Rational Standard and a Senior Associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity.