The Presidential Press Corps was not aimed at excluding any media from interacting with the government, Government Communication and Information System head Joel Netshitenzhe said on Friday.
”This is an addition to current arrangements, not a substitution,” he said at the launch of the corps in Pretoria.
President Thabo Mbeki said it was in the government’s interests to have active relations with the press.
”The fact that we have this initiative will hopefully assist us to do that.”
He said the Presidency’s interactions with the corps would be as open as possible.
”We do not proceed from the point that our first task is to withhold information.”
However, Mbeki called on the corps members — who have been nominated by the media employing them — to treat information with the necessary sensitivity. There was a difference between a background information session and a press conference, he said.
South African National Editors Forum chairman Mathatha Tsedu said the country had a Constitution and various laws giving access to information. Now it was not about whether the government gave information but when it did so.
But Mbeki said: ”There is some information one can’t talk about, whether it is on a Sunday or a Monday.”
He hoped the interaction between the Presidency and the corps would help increase journalists’ depth of understanding so their information would be as accurate and as up to date as possible ”so there are not any unnecessary contentions about assumptions”.
When one read an article which said it was written by an agricultural correspondent, one assumed that person knew something about agriculture, the president said.
”When you read something by a political correspondent it is dangerous to assume this person knows anything about politics.”
The corps was initially dogged by controversy when, in the process of getting security clearance, journalists were asked about their bank accounts and sex lives. It ended with an apology to journalists concerned by Intelligence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu. A new understanding has since relaxed the conditions.
Referring back to the controversy and using the current war in Iraq as a metaphor, Netshitenzhe said on Friday: ”If you put hacks and spooks together the battles of Nasiriyah and Baghdad look like a Sunday school picnic.”
Tsedu said: ”In the end we were able to overcome all the hurdles… There is a commitment that ensures a mechanism that will allow us to service the South African public.”
Comparing the new understanding to the deal for a transitional government for the Democratic Republic of Congo, signed in Sun City on Wednesday, he said it created new hope, but was infested with minefields.
Mbeki agreed that problems and challenges might appear, but said he thought the press corps would work. ”There is no reason why it shouldn’t. It will depend entirely on all of us.” – Sapa