WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-03-13 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
South Africa has press freedom, but actions by government officials, the private sector, political parties and some institutions are threatening this freedom, according to the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef).
Raymond Louw, the chairperson of Sanef’s sub-committee on media freedom, on Wednesday criticised the government, the ANC and the Forum of Black Journalists (FBJ).
In a presentation to the University of Pretoria’s Centre for International Political Studies, Louw said although South Africa was ranked high in terms of press freedom, some government officials sought to “muzzle the media, especially when they fear the information the media will publish is likely to be highly embarrassing because of the corruption, maladministration or misconduct that it will reveal”.
Louw said the government, including the office of the presidency, had on occasion sought to denigrate critical journalists for lack of “responsibility, racism and besmirching the country’s good name and accusing journalists of attempting to remove government from power”.
He was referring to a “scathing” attack by the ANC in which it informed newspaper readers “to treat everything that is published with the greatest scepticism, because it might be false”.
Louw said when the ANC was approached about its claim that a report in a newspaper was false, it could not provide proof to support its claim.
“There is no record of the ANC taking this complaint to the Press Ombudsman, where its accuracy could be tested. There have been a string of cases where officials have used various methods to muzzle the media. There has been direct physical action taken to bar reporters and photographers from courts to what I call judicial censorship by bringing applications before the high courts to interdict newspapers from publishing certain types of information on various grounds usually related to intrusions into the privacy of people, or detracting from their dignity.”
Louw said there had been a number of worrying incidents: the exclusion of reporters by ANC president Jacob Zuma’s bodyguards at his first court appearance on a rape charge; the attempt to gag a report about Matthias Rath accusing the Treatment Action Campaign of being fronts for pharmaceuticals; President Thabo Mbeki’s security guards removing film from a camera after the president was photographed entering a hospital for a medical check-up; Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s bodyguards barring reporters from reporting on her visit to her Zimbabwe counterpart at Westcliff Hotel; and Zuma’s lawsuit against several newspapers and a radio station.
“In municipalities, questions are simply not answered and information such as budgetary or other documentary details are not given to the media. There are also instances of misleading or inaccurate information being given out.”
Louw also criticised the exclusion of white journalists by the FBJ at its event where Zuma was due to speak.
“The last thing that Zuma should do as a member of a political party that stands for non-racism is to speak at a forum that is racially exclusive.”