Johannesburg – President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (Sona) was allegedly interrupted to play an advert, a 9pm news bulletin was cancelled for a paid-for German soccer game, and a major bank could sponsor content.
These are some of the incidents that senior editorial staff members at the SABC have listed as examples of commercial interests that have been put ahead of the public broadcaster’s mandate of providing news to millions of South Africans.
Sunday World can reveal that senior editors at the organisation have written a complaint to the SA National Editors Forum (Sanef) regarding what they call “chequebook” journalism at the SABC, whereby commercial sales pitches drive editorial judgement.
In an e-mail dated February 22, SABC economics editor Thandeka Gqubule-Mbeki told Sanef’s Kate Skinner that the corporation’s group executive for news and current affairs, Phathiswa Magopeni, allegedly approved a decision to “monetise Sona and budget” speeches.
“I had to write to say that the budget speech will not be handled that way [like the Sona] or an Icasa [Independent Communications Authority of South Africa] hearing will surely follow, failing of which given the docility of Icasa, a high court hearing would be appropriate as no internal [communication] is forthcoming,” she said.
In an earlier e-mail, Gqubule- Mbeki complained to Reginald Nxumalo, group sales executive, that contrary to editorial policies, marketing managers were giving questions and scripts to editors and journalists.
She asked, in the message in which Magopeni was included, what codes and editorial values they were still bound to as she was “utterly confounded”.
In a reply to Skinner, Magopeni said she had been in constant engagements with the sales department to ensure that content was not traded for advertisements, saying it contravened Icasa regulations and the SABC’s editorial policy.
“So, it is an issue that I have been dealing with for a while now and trying to get everyone to understand the dos and don’ts. I will continue to do so when such things happen.”
A trail of e-mails Sunday World has seen shows the battle that senior editors are waging against trading editorial content for commercial reasons, and the new news structure. In December, SABC editorial staff wrote to the corporation’s management to raise objections about the “inhuman” way the section 189 retrenchment process was unfolding.
The public broadcaster’s senior editors warned that the public broadcaster was moving away from the basic tenets of public broadcasting and its constitutional mandate, arguing there was commodification of news.
SABC spokesperson Mmoni Seapolelo denied that Ramaphosa’s Sona was interrupted for an advert.
“It is also important to mention that whenever there are sporting activities scheduled on Free-To-Air channels (SABC 1, 2, 3) affecting news slots, programming does get changed. This is not a new occurrence, schedules get adjusted all the time because the SABC does not have a Free-To-Air sports channel, and the genre forms a key part of the Corporation’s public mandate,” she said.
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