I try to defend journalism as much as I can, but damn, sometimes the media makes it hard. Exhibit A: the fact that a documentary produced by Iqbal Survé’s fiction factory, featuring the nonexistent decuplets, is in line to win an international journalism award.

On Wednesday, the SA National Editors Forum (Sanef) fired off a press release expressing its horror that the International News Media Association (INMA) had shortlisted Survé’s Baby Trade for the Global Media Awards, in the category “Best Use Of Social Media”.

That looked bad enough for the Fourth Estate, but the INMA was about to heap insult on top of injury...