Johannesburg - African National Congress President Jacob Zuma's attack on the print media on Friday reveals a "hostile state of mind towards the media," says the SA National Editors Forum (Sanef).
"The attack on the media contains wild generalisations encompassing the media as a whole," it said in a statement on Friday.
Sanef was responding to Zuma's weekly newsletter, published on his party's ANC Today website in which he said the media in South Africa was "politically and ideologically" out of synch with the society in which it operates.
"There are few, if any, mainstream media outlets that articulate a progressive left perspective," Zuma said.
Sanef said Zuma's letter contained no specific allegations, and therefore did not merit a reply.
However, the generalised complaint that the media was politically and ideologically out of synch with the society in which it exists could be responded to "by suggesting that the ANC president and the ANC carefully read the many readers' letters columns in the newspapers, which will tell them what the people think".
Sanef welcomes 'non-propagandist information'
The forum also said it welcomed Zuma's stated intention to widen the channel of communication between the ANC and SA citizens.
Zuma said in his letter that last month's ANC national conference had called for the movement to develop its own media platforms.
"This needs to take place alongside the effort to transform the South African media environment so that it becomes more representative of the diversity of views and interests in society, more accessible to the majority of the people, and less beholden to commercial interests," he said.
Sanef said it would welcome any new print media enterprise that would "increase the flow of non-propagandist information from the party and especially the government".
The forum also said it would take Zuma's non-mention of an ANC proposal to investigate the setting up of a media tribunal as a sign the proposal had been dropped.
"That is to be welcomed because such a tribunal would conflict with constitutional media freedom."
In his newsletter, Zuma said the overall orientation of South African media was "politically conservative".
'Opposition party'
He said the media was not simply the product of disinterested and detached observers.
"It is instead a product of the various political, social, economic and cultural forces that exist within a society. It is a battle of ideas, and, as such, the media is part of the battle for power.
He said at times, the media functioned as if it were an "opposition party".
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