Khadija Magardie
The SABC has refused to accept last week’s judgment by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) which found the public broadcaster guilty of unfair reporting against Allister Sparks.
The BCCSA has acknowledged that it has received an application for a review of its decision from the SABC. The directive which ordered the SABC to broadcast a summary of the judgment on all its main news bulletins has been suspended pending the outcome of the review.
Sparks, former editor-in-chief of SABC TV News, lodged a complaint with the BCCSA late last year after the corporation’s chief executive of news, Enoch Sithole, accused him of racism on radio and television news bulletins. Sparks brought the application against the SABC because he was not given the right to reply.
Sithole was commenting on Sparks’s criticism of the SABC before a parliamentary committee which was interviewing Sparks as a nominee for the SABC board. One radio bulletin quoted Sithole as saying Sparks “refused to appoint blacks … because he believed blacks were thoroughly incompetent”.
Despite the SABC’s claims that it had taken sufficient steps to contact Sparks for his views, the BCCSA found that the public broadcaster had contravened the Broadcasting Code in terms of balanced news coverage, and that it had employed delay tactics in soliciting Sparks’s views.
Sparks called the SABC application for a review a “delay tactic”, and “a public demonstration of their lack of confidence in the BCCSA”. He also expressed regret that the SABC’s actions could serve as a disincentive to the public to approach the BCCSA.
The SABC this week refused to divulge its reasons for appealing the BCCSA judgment. SABC representative Nalini Ramdhani denied that the corporation was employing delay tactics to circumvent the BCCSA.