The Freedom of Expression Institute this week accused the government of using the SABC’s failure to meet its public mandate to tighten its grip on the public broadcaster through the controversial Broadcasting Amendment Bill.
The government has touted the amendments in the Bill as key to redressing the lack of language diversity on television. The amendments propose the establishment of two regional channels for languages other than English and the minis- terial vetting of language and programming policy.
Language diversity will be high on the agenda when public hearings on the Bill are held in Parliament by the middle of next month. Language organisations like the Pan South African Language Board have been invited to the hearings.
Nkenke Kekana, chairman of Parliament’s communication committee, said the hearings would determine the best way to give effect to the constitutional recognition of South Africa’s 11 languages.
The Bill has been widely slammed as a drift from public to state broadcasting. Controversial changes include provisions for the communications minister to vet language, news and programming policies, a requirement of ”accurate, accountable and fair reporting in order to advance the national and public interest”, and a ministerial say on appointments to two newly created management boards.
Concern has also been raised about the digital technology proposed for the two regional channels.
Jane Duncan, executive director of the Freedom of Expression Institute, said the government had correctly picked up the justified anger about the lack of language diversity, but that the deep problem was a dearth of state funding for the SABC to pursue its mandate. ”That the SABC is not delivering is of government’s own making,” she said.
The Bill proposes to divide public and commercial broadcasting entities and to end cross-subsidisation, which would only deepen the crisis, she said.
Duncan said internal reorganisation had to focus on a shift from managing to programming. Spending on programming had dropped from 66% of the budget in 1989 to just 42% for both programming and broadcasting in 2000.
At the same time, the ratio of managers to workers increased from 1:5 in 1994 to 1:3 in 2000. The ratio was one manager for every two workers in the news, television and radio sections.
Duncan said a broadcaster that served the public, rather than the state, had to be independent and accountable. The lack of public funding and the ministerial mandate to approve policies, including reporting standards that were normally the domain of the editor, were ”a travesty of the basic principles of public broadcasting”.
The proposals would force jour- nalists to report in a manner that conformed to the government’s understanding of the national and the public interest.
”The Bill doesn’t make sense unless you want to dismantle the public broadcaster, which is best placed to reflect government’s failure to deliver,” Duncan said
The government has defended the amendments. ”The problem is a problem of semantics. We are talking about the minister only being involved in policy. The minister has nothing to do with operational issues,” said Robert Nkuna, the communication ministry’s spokesman.