The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) will seek a meeting with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) over a letter announcing that the broadcaster had broken ties with the forum, apparently over its stance regarding the publication of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s medical records, Sanef said on Saturday.
Sanef chairperson Jovial Rantao said the forum had received a letter from the SABC announcing its intentions on Friday. ”We will be seeking a meeting with the SABC to discuss the contents of the letter,” he said without elaborating on the contents of the letter.
SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said the group chief executive and the board had written a letter to Rantao withdrawing its membership.
”We are withdrawing from the membership of Sanef. We will consider it [our membership] once issues raised [in the letter] have been dealt with,” said Kganyago.
The Saturday Star reported that the SABC had broken ranks with the forum in protest against its stance on Tshabalala-Msimang and the publication of her medical records by the Sunday Times.
In the letter, the SABC said it would no longer stand idle ”whilst we are being made a whipping boy and a scapegoat by the profit-driven media. Even less are we prepared to associate with the enemies of our freedom and our people.
”We cannot remain quiet while our mothers and our democratically chosen leaders are stripped naked for the sole reason of selling newspapers,” the paper reported.
On Thursday, the Johannesburg High Court ordered that Tshabalala-Msimang’s medical records, obtained unlawfully from the Cape Town Medi-Clinic, be returned to the institution ”forthwith”.
Delivering the order after having reserved judgement in the case between the minister and the Sunday Times, which reported on her behaviour during a 2005 stay at the hospital, Judge Mahomed Jajbhay also ordered that all the minister’s medical records on journalists’ laptops and computers be deleted. However, he said personal notes of Sunday Times journalists ”are not affected by the court [order]”.
He also said there was no order against future comments being made by the Sunday Times, as this would amount to censorship.
Sanef had welcomed the ruling on Thursday, saying it believed the judge’s order that copies of the medical records be returned was to be expected.
However, the judge’s acceptance of the Sunday Times‘s defence that it acted in the public interest in divulging the records’ contents is welcomed because it upholds an important journalistic principle in support of press freedom, Sanef said in a statement.
”The documents reflected on the allegedly abusive conduct of the health minister while she was in hospital and on her alleged drinking before and after undergoing a liver transplant, all matters of public interest,” Sanef said. ”The important ruling by the judge is that publication of that information was entirely legitimate and in the public interest in the light of the health minister being a public figure.”
Sanef is funded largely by corporate donations and funding obtained from major media houses on an annual basis, including the SABC. Membership is voluntary and members belong to the forum in their individual capacities.
The SABC abandoned ”all pretence at professionalism and impartiality” when it decided to withdraw from Sanef, The Democratic Alliance said on Sunday.
Accountability
The proposal of the SABC board to break away from Sanef ”defies the commitment to accountability on the part of those holding public office, to the right of the public to be informed, and to freedom of expression”, said Democratic Alliance spokesperson on communications Dene Smuts on Sunday.
She added: ”If it is true that the minister has a problem with alcohol consumption, then the public has a right to be informed.”
She criticised the SABC’s portrayal of Tshabalala-Msimang. ”Instead of dealing with this issue and holding the minister to account, the SABC has been showing on some news bulletins footage … the minister sitting beautifully dressed and coiffured at her desk, apparently in full command of her faculties and portfolio, smiling like a movie star while an administrative assistant hovers for instructions.”
Smuts concluded: ”It is [Dali Mpofu] who is delinquent, not Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya.”