“We needed it [this fund] back in 2002,” said Gugulethu Moyo, new director of the Media Legal Defence Initiative, referring to the Mugabe government’s suppression of the Daily News eight years back. The company owning the paper still sat with legal bills of $500 000 dollars (US — not Zimbawean!) dollars as a legacy of the […]
Guy Berger
Posted inNews/Politics
Tightening the leash on the SABC and Icasa
No one has come out shining in the mud-slinging around the SABC, but the biggest loser is the autonomy of communications. This has been paralleled by a similar song-and-dance in parliament, in regard to the broadcasting regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa). The consequence is that South Africa currently sits with both […]
Posted inMedia
Saving journalists and saving journalism
The shockwaves of collapsing newspapers in the US have startled everyone around the world, not least the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). It’s a body which represents some 600 000 media staffers across 120 countries. Or so it did, according to figures last year. Today, the crisis is cutting into those numbers. A think-tank, dubbed the […]
Posted inMedia
Fumbling with broadcasting’s future in a socially-networked world
The crisis of the US newspaper industry is what broadcasters are going to experience. Plunging audiences and collapsing advertising revenues. And it’s also coming to South Africa. That’s the prognosis of Wits digital arts professor Christo Doherty speaking as chair of a conference on digital media for broadcasters, organised by Classic Events at Wanderers this […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Easy to sacrifice Snuki, harder to find the perfect replacement
With the rise of the Zuma era, the SABC board has decided to ditch Snuki Zikalala as head of news. At the same time, the board itself faces the strong likelihood of being ditched. Parliament has been itching to oust it ever since Thabo Mbeki was toppled from the ANC. The board members were controversially […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Lies, damned lies and tabloid statistics …
Business Day, The Citizen, Sowetan and the Sunday Times – four newspapers that need to pull up their statistical socks. And it’s the leading tabloid paper that avoids tabloid treatment of statistics.
Posted inMedia
Finding a way forward as African broadcast reform falters
Transformation of African state-owned broadcasters into proper public-service institutions has come to a standstill. For instance, Zambia’s progressive laws passed in 2002 have yet to be implemented. In role-model South Africa, the crisis around the SABC shows the need for a major re-design of the public broadcaster, but parliament is focussed only on getting rid […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
SA’s mediascape faces the challenge of getting more voices
Our eyes and ears are attentive to the mainstream media as the most influential platform in the coming elections. But it’s also important that there are also many other smaller players adding to the diversity of coverage. Some of these enterprises owe their existence to the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA), which has spent […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
A Truth Commission for SA’s journalism education?
Over ten years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) convened hearings into the role of the media in relation to the gross violation of human rights that happened under apartheid. But one sector that seemed to escape the TRC’s attention was that of higher education, except for a section in its final report titled: […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Right-wing Zapiro, or a guy who gets it right?
The country’s visual conscience corrected his balance with his revised cartoon on Sunday that switched the Jacob Zuma rape of justice image, with members of the Thabo Mbeki camp. Both, according to his accompanying caption, are valid. I analysed this development for the Daily Dispatch as regards his basic message. Which is: South Africa needs […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
A scenario for the SABC
The SABC’s board of directors is on its way out, but later rather than sooner. And what happens then? Those wanting them out don’t seem to have given enough thought to this. This conclusion emerges from current discussions in Parliament about a legal amendment that would force President Thabo Mbeki to fire the board. To […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Party HQ shouldn’t call shots on SABC — Mathews Phosa
Intervention by ANC headquarters to change Parliament’s nominees for the SABC board last year was not only “going too far”, it was actually “corrupt”. This strong assessment comes from ANC treasurer general Mathews Phosa, speaking to the South African National Editors’ Forum in Johannesburg on Saturday. It should be up to Parliament to resolve who […]