Sign up with GoogleDiversion tactics are the order of the day, as the government attempts to reverse crucial rights secured in the Constitution, writes Brendan Boyle
It is not fantastical to imagine these scenarios:
•A daily newspaper would have to submit, for approval, a news agency report from the Middle East in which a Palestinian youth is quoted advocating an attack on Israel or an Israeli leader threatens fresh assaults on Lebanon. Many of US President George Bush’s statements on Iraq and Iran could constitute propaganda for war;
•An interview or analysis examining Zuma’s campaign to become president in terms of ethnicity, photographs of his supporters waving anti-Xhosa posters, archive recordings of Peter Mokaba chanting “Kill the farmer, kill the Boer” and, possibly, even Zuma’s own trademark Umshini Wami song could all be considered potentially unacceptable to the censors and would have to be submitted for a decision; and
•Magazine articles about techniques for better sex and the discreet, but specific, illustrations that often accompany them would have to be submitted for review and could be approved subject to conditions such as that they could only be sold in a sex shop or in an opaque wrapper.
Though the explanatory memorandum says the Bill was drafted after discussions with “a wide range of external stakeholders”, newspaper, magazine, radio and television producers, editors, managers and owners were not consulted or even told that the government was contemplating a substantial reversal of media freedom.
If consumers of our famously free media were consulted, the government has not said how.
Unless the word goes out from Tuynhuys, or Luthuli House, to the ANC study group ahead of the final hearings next week, and there is a last-minute change of mood, this could well be the second-last edition of the Sunday Times in which you and your R10 note decide what’s fit to print.
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/articles/article.aspx?ID=ST6A211663
It is not fantastical to imagine these scenarios:
•A daily newspaper would have to submit, for approval, a news agency report from the Middle East in which a Palestinian youth is quoted advocating an attack on Israel or an Israeli leader threatens fresh assaults on Lebanon. Many of US President George Bush’s statements on Iraq and Iran could constitute propaganda for war;
•An interview or analysis examining Zuma’s campaign to become president in terms of ethnicity, photographs of his supporters waving anti-Xhosa posters, archive recordings of Peter Mokaba chanting “Kill the farmer, kill the Boer” and, possibly, even Zuma’s own trademark Umshini Wami song could all be considered potentially unacceptable to the censors and would have to be submitted for a decision; and
•Magazine articles about techniques for better sex and the discreet, but specific, illustrations that often accompany them would have to be submitted for review and could be approved subject to conditions such as that they could only be sold in a sex shop or in an opaque wrapper.
Though the explanatory memorandum says the Bill was drafted after discussions with “a wide range of external stakeholders”, newspaper, magazine, radio and television producers, editors, managers and owners were not consulted or even told that the government was contemplating a substantial reversal of media freedom.
If consumers of our famously free media were consulted, the government has not said how.
Unless the word goes out from Tuynhuys, or Luthuli House, to the ANC study group ahead of the final hearings next week, and there is a last-minute change of mood, this could well be the second-last edition of the Sunday Times in which you and your R10 note decide what’s fit to print.
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/articles/article.aspx?ID=ST6A211663
