Parliament will not approve drastic new controls on the functioning of print and electronic media if they are unconstitutional, the chair of the portfolio committee on home affairs has said, suggesting that the committee may soften a controversial Bill that is currently working its way through the legislature.
‘We don’t want to legislate and see it going to court,†Patrick Chauke, the ANC chairperson of Parliament’s home affairs committee, told the Mail & Guardian after two days of hearings on the Film and Publications Amendment Bill. ‘We are going to speak to the state law advisers, we think we can come to an amicable solution.â€
Those remarks were in sharp contrast to his repeated insistence from the chair that the media do not demonstrate enough concern about the perils of child pornography, and should face tighter regulation.
The committee is hearing representations from editors, newspaper owners, broadcasters, and cellphone operators on the Bill, which would end an exemption that enables print and electronic media to avoid prepublication screening by the Film and Publications board (FPB).
Representatives of the print media, including Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee — in her capacity as chair of the South African National Editors Forum — and proprietor Trevor Ncube, who is president of Print Media South Africa, on Wednesday warned that the Bill imposed unworkable pre-publication screening rules, and would choke free speech.
Steven Budlender, an advocate appearing for the National Association of Broadcasters, told the committee on Thursday that the legislation was not only impracticable, but unconstitutional on at least three counts:
It subjects broadcasters to the control of the Film and Publications Board, which does not meet the constitutional standard for independence as its members are appointed and paid by the home affairs minister.
It treats ‘any sequence of visual images†as a ‘filmâ€, and would mean that every single thing aired on television, from documentaries to news bulletins and sportscasts, would have to undergo a process of prior approval by the board, and a huge range of material would potentially be banned due to vague wording.
Criminal offences detailed in the Bill violate freedom of expression and go too far in prohibiting legitimate expression.
Budlender and representatives of the broadcasters pointed out that there is already a substantial set of legal, regulatory and technical mechanisms to safeguard against the broadcast of child pornography, and to protect children from age-inappropriate materials.
Chauke began Thursday’s hearing by asking journalists to lead the committee in a round of applause for Press Freedom day.
He followed that up, however, with a stern lecture on what he suggested was the media’s pursuit of profit over principle, blaming delegations from the National Association of Broadcasters and the three cellular networks ‘for the scourge of uncontrollable material that we see very rife on cellphones and our televisionsâ€.