Media Appeals Tribunal should not be used for censorship

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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While the SACP supported the ANC’s proposal for a MAT, the body should not be appointed by parliament, SACP secretary general Blade Nzimande said.

“It needs to be an independent body – independent of party political, governmental, and narrow commercial media interference,”  he told journalists after the central committee meeting of the SACP  in Johannesburg.

“While the current proposals suggest that the tribunal should be appointed by Parliament, the SACP agrees that we need to guard against the  danger of political manipulation of the process,” he said adding that during Thabo Mbeki’s presidency, a sound multi-party consensus in committee on a new SABC Board was undermined by presidential interference.

He said for these reasons, the central committee proposed that a selection panel for the Tribunal should include a range of representative structures from the media itself, including community media.

“The key role of Parliament should be less in the appointment function, and more in the possibilities Parliament offers for creating a public space in which to have an ongoing national debate about progress in developing and democratising our media and setting standards for reporting.”

He said SACP proposed that the tribunal should be required to table six-monthly reports to Parliament on appeals submitted to it  and on the rulings that it has made.