The South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) has expressed concern over allegations of editorial interference and censorship at the eNCA news channel.
Former eNCA Political Reporter, Samkele Maseko alleged that eNCA News Chief, Kanthan Pillay had censored stories in the newsroom.
Maseko has since left the news channel.
Sanef says media freedom is a critical part of a healthy democracy and should be fiercely protected by all South Africans.
The Forum’s Executive Director, Kate Skinner says they will write to eNCA management to request a meeting and seek clarity on this matter.
Skinner says, “We are trying to meet with eNCA. We have said that we need to meet as soon as possible to discuss these issues in depth. For us the issue is, we do not want censorship in the newsroom. We want journalists to report without fear or favour. So for us, it is very important to get to the bottom of these allegations because if there has been censorship in the newsroom we need to look at what happened and obviously how to prevent it from happening in the future.”
Want to speak about how you canned an SAA story saying a journalist is an imbongi of the workers, wanting Journalists to find faults with workers at all costs whilst protecting bosses. https://t.co/qnKkpnGoX4
— #TheLordOfTheMedia (@samkelemaseko) December 18, 2019
Listen here and listen good, you may be pulling strings there at @eNCA but you will refer to your family as Rats and not Black African Children. Settle your political scores using eNCA but disrespect us for dumping ship led by a failed politician. https://t.co/qnKkpnGoX4
— #TheLordOfTheMedia (@samkelemaseko) December 18, 2019
Do you want me to speak about how you instructed that @MYANC MP Bongani Bhongo be sensored by removing all the allegations he made at Minister Pravin Gordhan? What happened to a simple journalism principle of two sides to a story? Getting both parties to answer for themselves https://t.co/qnKkpnGoX4
— #TheLordOfTheMedia (@samkelemaseko) December 18, 2019