Legislation News South Africa

Swazi media owners finally embrace MCC

On 28 October 2007, media owners in Swaziland finally embraced the long-awaited Media Complaints Commission (MCC), a media self-regulatory framework whose operation has been delayed by lack of firm buy-in from the media proprietors.

At a meeting organised by the Swaziland chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA Swaziland) and the Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ), media owners at last unanimously agreed to fund the operations of the MCC.

They committed themselves to fund even initial costs including registering the MCC as a Trust. This will then pave the way for the MCC to be operational within a month.

The media owners had a meeting scheduled for Thursday 1 November 2007, to fine-tune their commitment before members of the public are invited to start submitting their complaints. The results of this meeting are yet to be published.

This positive development seeks to pre-empt a government move to pilot a media Council Bill which aims to introduce a statutory media regulation. Parliament also recently called on government to pilot the Media Council Bill within a month to regulate the media.

Article published courtesy of MISA

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