Back to the bad old ways ...
In what is seen as a return to apartheid-style repression of any news that places the government in a bad light, the SABC has decided to stop showing violent anti-government protests, a move that has brought the threat of legal action notes Daily News. It has also won the support of both the ANC and the Minister of Communications.
However, the move has been condemned by free speech groups and opposition parties, who claim it disregards the right to dissent. SABC’s chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng barred news of violent anti-government protests flaring up around the country ostensibly in a bid to discourage others from carrying out similar forms of violence. According to a News24 report, Busi Mtabane, spokesperson for the Right to Know campaign, told Al Jazeera the move signalled a return to apartheid times when the national broadcaster was a mouthpiece for the ruling party.
‘Filtering the news will leave people on the ground less informed and oblivious to the failures of the state,’ Mtabane said. ‘Most of the time, protesting is the only tool people have to be heard. We have been raising our issues, but no one is listening. Being out on the street, this is when the media turns the spotlight on these communities,’ Mtabane said. Motsoeneng said the broadcaster ‘would not assist these individuals to push their agenda that seeks media attention’.
Motsoeneng claims he has made a ‘responsible’ decision. He accused certain political parties of ‘celebrating’ the burning of property instead of condemning the acts, notes a report on the IoL site. ‘I am actually shocked because some political parties are actually celebrating, for me they are not leaders. There is no leader who can celebrate when people are destroying property, when people are refusing teachers from teaching then we can’t celebrate that,’ he said.
Communications Minister Faith Muthambi has given the move her full backing. ‘We unequivocally condemn the destruction of public and private infrastructure. It is our belief that the decision by the public broadcaster not to show footage of people burning public institutions, such as schools and libraries, in any of its news bulletins, will go a long way to discourage attention-seeking anarchists,’ Muthambi said, according to a report on the IoL site. She added the department respected the editorial independence of the public broadcaster and described the ban as positive because the SABC had a mandate to ensure ‘nation building and the promotion of social cohesion’.
And the ANC says the move shouldn’t be seen as censorship. ‘What the SABC has done with its decision not to show footage or visuals of people destroying property has opened up a debate... (and) media houses must welcome that debate of what is the role of media in the context of nation building,’ national spokesperson Zizi Kodwa is quoted as saying in a News24 report. ‘I don’t think we must look at it as censorship… we must not look at it negatively,’ he added. Kodwa insisted the ANC was not involved in the decision. ‘It is a decision the SABC took alone,’ he said. He said protesters got excited when they saw TV cameras, which could lead them to ‘create more trouble'.
The DA, however, said it was ‘considering its legal options’ as the ANC was turning the SABC into a ‘propaganda portal’. A Weekend Argus report quotes DA communications spokesperson Phumzile van Damme as saying the party’s lawyers were considering the matter. EFF spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said Motsoeneng’s argument was fallacious. ‘(Motsoeneng’s decision) has to do with not showing protests during elections because this hurts the ANC.’ Liezl van der Merwe, the IFP’s communications spokesperson, said the SABC’s argument was incorrect. ‘Violent protests often happen before the media arrives in a troubled area, as was the case in Vuwani recently,’ she said, referrin g to the destruction and vandalism of 50 schools in Limpopo earlier this month. Calling the SABC’s move as ‘self-censorship’, Van der Merwe said the decision had been taken to protect the ANC from bad publicity ahead of the local government elections in August. Dennis Bloem, spokesperson for COPE, described the announcement as a ‘decision to black out reality’, saying a ‘safe and stable society requires an informed citizenry’.
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Cosatu has labelled it ‘autocratic and patronising’. The federation called on the public broadcaster’s board to reconsider its decision and allow its journalists to tell stories uncensored, notes a report on the IoL site. Cosatu’s spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said while it condemned violent protests and expected swift action from authorities to curb vandalism, it was against sanitised news. ‘It is not the public broadcaster’s mandate to mask the challenges that this country is facing and gag itself from exposing people’s anger, including their criminality,’ said Pamla. He said the decision assumed that citizens were easily influenced and should therefore be protected to prevent copyca t action. A similar view was taken by the SA Communist Party. ‘All the evil and good must be captured by the media. Coverage must not be restricted,’ national spokesperson, Alex Mashilo, said, according to another report on the IoL site. ‘Let people make their choices.’
Concerned media groups have teamed up to submit an urgent application to Icasa to force the SABC to revoke the decision. William Bird, head of Media Monitoring Africa, which has lodged the application along with the SOS Coalition – a pressure group campaigning for an independent public broadcaster – and the Freedom of Expression Institute, said that the organisation saw the ban as a violation of the Broadcasting Act and the public broadcaster had also broken its own ‘licence conditions’, notes a City Press report. The SA National Editors Forum was quoted during the week as saying the decision amounted to censorship and should be condemned.
Article disclaimer: While we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this article, it is not intended to provide final legal advice as facts and situations will differ from case to case, and therefore specific legal advice should be sought with a lawyer.
