The Democratic Alliance has presented a memorandum of grievances to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) over its coverage of the run-up to the March 1 municipal elections.
”The memorandum sets out all the DA’s grievances and proposes a series of action steps which the DA believes the SABC should take — including broadcasting the DA’s manifesto launch live — if it is serious about providing balanced and fair coverage of this and future elections,” DA Cape Town mayoral candidate Helen Zille said on Thursday.
The memorandum states, among other things, that elections only make sense when the voting public is given an opportunity to compare the offer and message of all serious political parties.
It should be the job of the public broadcaster, as it is in other democracies, to ensure the public is properly informed about each party’s campaign and its progress over the course of an election.
The DA believes the prospect of free and fair local government elections has already been seriously compromised by the SABC’s approach to political coverage in the official election window period, which opened on Friday January 6.
By providing one-and-a-half hours of live coverage for the African National Congress’s election launch on January 8, and in refusing to grant equitable live coverage for other serious political parties, the SABC has failed to uphold the principles of the Broadcasting Code of Conduct.
Of the seven election events held by the DA since its election campaign launch on January 15, the SABC has consistently ignored and marginalised the DA on television and failed to provide coverage of the DA’s key political messages.
”The DA believes that the national management of the SABC is loyal first and foremost to the ruling party and this, in turn, undermines its ability to provide fair, objective and balanced coverage.”
In its memo, the DA proposes, among other things, that the SABC provide live coverage of the DA’s manifesto launch on Saturday, and that the SABC adopt more stringent guidelines regarding the fairness and balance of coverage during an election. — Sapa