The establishment of a media appeals tribunal as proposed by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) threatens the right to press freedom as well as individuals’ rights to free expression, the press ombudsman said in Durban on Monday.
Ombudsman Joe Thloloe, speaking in Durban at a debate entitled ”The New ANC and the Media”, warned that ”once media freedom is threatened, it is an individual’s freedom of expression that is threatened”.
”From the way it’s [the Constitution] written I accept we in the media hold press freedom as trustees. We are just custodians on behalf of the public in general.”
He said the ANC’s claim that it will support self regulation conflicts with its desire to establish a tribunal that is ”accountable to Parliament”.
”We have people [in the ANC] who talk the acceptable language we love but at the same time raise issues that make us wonder about their intentions.
”Once a tribunal is accountable to Parliament we have moved into new territory, where it is no longer self regulation — and therefore press freedom and freedom of expression are threatened.”
Thloloe said that a self-regulatory system can be criticised as favouring those who established it — in South Africa’s case 640 publications had promised to abide by the rules of the press ombudsman.
”If you look at the system, the idea is the newspapers themselves, the magazines themselves, saying we want to do the best we can because our stock-in-trade is our credibility.”
He said a self-regulatory system will ultimately guarantee freedom of expression in South Africa.
UmAfrika editor Cyril Madlala said the media needs to ask itself whether media has ”lost the inside track” of the ANC and whether the media understands what is happening within the ANC at a branch level.
He said he wonders whether what the mainstream media report matches what is happening within the organisation.
Madlala pointed out that media debates and predictions ahead of the ANC’s Polokwane had been wrong.
”Should we really be surprised that the ANC looks at us [the media] the way it looks at us?” he asked.
Political analyst Protas Madlala said the gains in media freedom made since before 1994 should be celebrated and the ”challenge for civil society is to preserve those gains”.
He expressed concern that some journalists are ”sometimes too close to some politicians” as they seek a future career in government, while some newspapers censor themselves to an extreme in a bid to ”satisfy their capitalist masters”. — Sapa