October 25, 2007, 09:15
There was no need to panic and be alarmists about the possible introduction of certain forms of state ‘remedial measurers’ including a media tribunal to curb apparent ideological biases in South Africa’s media orientation, Smuts Ngonyama, African National Congress (ANC) head of the Presidency said yesterday.
Ngonyama was participating in a Public Colloquium on the proposed ANC Media Policy discussion document titled Media and the Battle of Ideas organised by the Journalism and Media Studies Programme of the University of the Witwatersrand.
The document calls for an investigation into the “adequacy or otherwise of the prevailing self regulating dispensation within the media and whatever remedial measures may be required to safeguard and promote the rights of all South Africans, and the need or otherwise for a media tribunal to address these matters”.
Tribunals stifling media freedom
Media scholar and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Wits, Tawana Kupe, expressed disquiet at the prospect of a media tribunal arguing that this has been a bone of contention between the media and governments in southern Africa over the past 10 to 15 years. In this battle of ideas, the media had argued that tribunals were a sure way of stifling media freedom and advocated self regulation in its place.
Kupe said there was a clear need to define what these remedial measures would be; would they mean the jailing of journalists, for example? But Jane Duncan, the executive director of the Freedom of Expression Institute, said while media attention had focused on ‘alarm bells” like the implications for media freedom of the proposed tribunal and the additional remedial measures, there was a need to understand the proposed media reform process as a whole.
“Progressive aspects of the ANC and government media policy that bring meaningful reform must be supported and those that do not, rejected. Making such assessments requires critical distance, not blind allegiance,” Duncan said.
“This will allow us to situate the points that are made within a framework, understand what drives them and amplify the strong points while addressing weaknesses.”
Media analysis
Ngonyama said the ANC’s point of departure was an analysis and interpretation of recent media reports which led it to conclude that there was indeed certain ideological biases against it.
“Articles, and indeed headlines, were peppered with words like ‘discontent’, ‘lack of delivery’ ‘dissatisfaction’ and so on. The reading public should have been in doubt that the ANC was about to get its comeuppance,” he said, citing controversial reports by the Sunday Times, Business Day and the Mail and Guardian on the eve of the 2006 local government elections.
“As we know, these reports turned out to be ill-founded. The ANC not only increased its share of the vote, from 59% in 2000 to 63% in 2006, but it also increased the absolute number of people who voted for it, gaining an additional 1.2 million votes.”
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