The SABC board called the special meeting to deal with concerns following concerted pressure which is increasingly being placed on the newsroom by political parties and allegations of bias levelled against its news division [see our poll Is the SABC biased in its political media coverage? and newswatch from earlier this week]. The attendees at the meeting included board members, senior editors, provincial editors and executive producers.
“The SABC board is extremely concerned by this external pressure and believes that it has the potential to seriously undermine the editorial independence of the news division,” Bheki Khumalo, the chairperson of the committee, said.
“Executive producers, in particular, complained about the pressure that they are being subjected to by political parties and other individuals, and were of the view that this would escalate as we get closer to the elections,” he added.
In the meeting, examples were given of threats levelled against some journalists and of SABC news staff being subjected to ongoing verbal abuse by politicians. According to a press statement from the SABC, the board and management “has full confidence in the integrity of its staff and the editorial processes and will work on the assumption that decisions that are taken in good faith, unless there is concrete evidence to the contrary”.
The meeting agreed to take the following steps:
The committee acknowledged that there may well be operational challenges within the newsroom and will consider legitimate complaints from political parties and the public about any aspect of the SABC News' operations, provided that these are substantiated.
The board, as the custodian of the editorial code, also stated that it will protect its editorial team from political parties or individuals who issue threats or abuse - verbally or otherwise to any of its editorial staff. It requests that legitimate and substantiated complaints must be dealt with in terms of the procedure set out above.