Posted inMediaNews/Politics

Let’s dump our ‘foreign, frigid and feelingless’ Bill of Rights

Dali Mpofu, the CEO and “editor-in-chief” of the SABC, has lashed out at members of the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) for “pretending to be converted to foreign, frigid and feelingless freedoms”. The issue that provoked Mpofu’s outrage was the Sunday Times‘s reliance on the right to freedom of expression in defence of its […]

Posted inGeneralMediaNews/Politics

Curiouser and curiouser …

Curious report just out on Reuters: Johannesburg (Reuters) — South Africa has denied it blamed Britain for Zimbabwe’s isolation in a report prepared for a regional summit earlier this month. The office of President Thabo Mbeki denied that the government produced a report on Zimbabwe critical of Britain before Mbeki briefed leaders of the Southern […]

Posted inMediaNews/Politics

From the Prophet Muhammad to Manto Tshabalala-Msimang: some thoughts on press freedom

Eighteen months ago, Judge Mohammed Jajbhay ruled that the Prophet Muhammad’s right to privacy outweighed the right to freedom of expression, and interdicted the Sunday Times from publishing cartoons of the prophet. This week, the same judge delivered a ringing endorsement of media freedom, made a decisive statement against censorship, and rejected the health minister’s […]

Posted inBusinessMediaNews/PoliticsTech

Let’s not be narrow-minded about broadband

The government’s plan to create a state-controlled company, Infraco, to drive down telecommunication costs and improve broadband internet access has, predictably, come under fire from free marketers. What we need, writes Duncan McLeod in the Financial Mail, is less state interference in the telecommunications sector, not more (read McLeod’s column). This strikes me as a […]