Brave decision by Primedia to cancel ANC press conference

Adding insult to injury in this comedy of errors, Radebe's limo reversed into the car of 702 morning talk show host John Robbie.

Cope? Nope.

In a nutshell, what happened was that when Primedia and the ANC agreed to hold the press conference at Primedia House, the broadcaster was told something else other than the big news Radebe wanted to tell to the nation today. Which was about a Cope member defecting to the ANC.

I suspect that Primedia and the entire press corps expected that the announcement would have something to do with Health Minister Barbara Hogan's criticism of the Government ban on the Dalai Lama.

Used and abused

When the Primedia people found out that the press conference was going to involve nothing more than the ANC crowing about a Cope defection back to their ranks, it quite rightly considered that in terms of news value the defection amounted to roughly zero and cancelled rather than allow its organisation to be abused by a political party.

Hopefully, now, Primedia will think twice about the trend it has started in term of hosting political press conferences at its headquarters. On the one hand, one can only assume that Primedia felt that having Radio 702 banners all over the place during press conferences would be good publicity.

Perceptions of complicity

Perhaps so, but on the other hand, this also has the potential of creating perceptions of complicity. Why, one could ask, would anyone choose to hold a press conference at Primedia House unless there was some sort of friendly relationship? It is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility that, when an organisation such as the ANC is "hosted" by Primedia, the perception is created that Primedia is biased toward the ANC.

Or the opposite. It also did not take long for callers to the Redi Direko show on 702 to suggest that Primedia, being supporters of Cope, cancelled the press conference because the ANC news would damage the Cope campaign. Other than that callers seemed split - either congratulating Primedia or criticising it for "playing games with listeners".

Frankly, these perceptions are not worth the questionable publicity gained.

@radio702's tweets about the ANC media conference at Primedia House that was cancelled at the last minute this morning, Thursday, 26 March 2009.

click to enlarge

For responses to @radio702's tweets concerning the Primedia press conference, see Twitter Search results.