New media bill slammed

A draft amendment bill, which critics claim would allow government more control over South Africa's public broadcaster, may be challenged in the Constitutional Court.

The Broadcast Amendment Bill, which was tabled in parliament last Friday, is yet to be passed and may face legal challenges from opposition parties who have denounced it as an attempt by government to exert political control over editorial content.

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is South Africa's national public service broadcaster. It broadcasts 20 internal radio stations in 11 languages, plus an external radio services in four languages. It boasts six television channels, four of them free-to-air and two satellite pay channels.

The broadcaster claims that more than 18 million adults tune into the radio network everyday, and 16 million adults watch the three free-to-air television channels.

The most contentious aspect of the Broadcast Amendment Bill is the provision that the SABC should submit a news editorial policy to Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri for approval.

A section of the bill states: "The board must prepare and submit to the minister for approval within three months ... policies governing the exercise of accurate, fair and accountable reporting. The board and individual journalists of the corporation shall be subject to the policies of the corporation dealing with accurate, fair and responsible journalism and thus exercise care and skill and act in the best interests of the corporation."

The South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) has slammed the proposed amendments.

"The bill ... introduces clauses that threaten the independence of the SABC board. These clauses also seek to give to the minister the power to approve editorial policies for the corporation, which would suggest power for the minister to approve or disapprove what is essentially a journalistic ethical issue," a SANEF statement said.

The SABC has recently suffered the resignations of both its chief executive of news, Barney Mthombothi, and his deputy and acting chief executive of news, Mathatha Tsedu, who announced his departure last week.

Tsedu, also chairman of SANEF, told IRIN on Monday that the SABC already had policies in place "which specifically state the board will formulate and approve policy and the news division will operate within that policy" and that "as long as it [the news division] operates within that policy it is autonomous, it has editorial independence within that broad framework".

Such policy clearly stated that the SABC would not allow it editorial content to be influenced by politics or commerce.

The new bill required the board to formulate policy, "which policy must now be approved by the minister. But what if the minister then says 'no, I don't like this'? Whose will then prevails? The issue of the minister approving the policy is a new entry in the relationship between the Ministry of Communication and SABC ... giving the minister some power to dictate the policy of covering news," Tsedu said.

The SABC has long been trying to shake off its past, SANEF said: "The SABC has come out of a past where it was used by the apartheid government as a propaganda tool. Immense work has been done by this nation to get the SABC to where it is now, a public broadcaster whose output is respected by all.

"Nothing should be done by government or anyone else to tarnish the image of the SABC. The bill seeks to do that, and the publicity generated around it has pointed the way to how people interpret it."

Tsedu added: "Insofar as you are talking about the impact on the credibility of the news, that amendment is quite significant. It introduces the minister, with a level of power, into the news-gathering and broadcasting process, in a way that she does not enjoy right now."

If the bill was to be passed, it would feed into suspicions still held by some that the public broadcaster was in fact a state broadcaster. "Those who will be at the SABC, doing their work as best they know how, will have a further hurdle to prove independence and credibility," Tsedu said.

SANEF has instructed a media lawyer to do "a thorough assessment of the bill" and the findings would be made public soon.