The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
John Nichols political journalist for "The Nation Magazine" and author of the book, "The Death and Life of American Journalism," says, as a country, America is very good at exporting its pathologies.
As a result, the culling of journalists is playing out in every country in the world and having a negative impact on the quality and quantity of traditional journalism.
This is a worrying development because journalism is intricately linked to democracy. There is nowhere in...
Jane Duncan -
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) did what most people suspected at its recent National General Council (NGC) meeting, and endorsed a Parliamentary investigation into the feasibility of setting up a statutory Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT). However the resolution that was passed by the NGC softened many of the more extreme positions taken by some ANC members in the recent past.
The dust had hardly settled on the NGC meeting, when South African Communist Party (SACP) General Secretary...
Jane Duncan -
On Wednesday the 4th of August, Sunday Times reporter Mzilikazi wa Afrika was arrested at the offices of the Sunday Times newspaper, in response to a complaint laid by the Premier of Mpumalanga province, David Mabuza. Many aspects of wa Afrika’s arrest have raised troubling questions about the appropriateness of the state’s actions, and have fuelled speculation that political pressure was brought to bear on the police to act against wa Afrika for his activities as a journalist....
In this recent interview with Russia Today, progressive journalist, John Pilger, argues, "What WikiLeaks has done, is what journalists should have done."
In his view, the WikiLeaks exposés might change journalism all together and if not change it, then at least wake it up.
WikiLeaks has given us a sense of the "political disaster that is behind the human disaster in Afghanistan."
It also highlights the need for "journalists to separate themselves from the...
Jane Duncan -
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has just released a document on the media for its National General Council (NGC) meeting, scheduled for September. The document, entitled 'Media transformation, ownership and diversity', claims to build on a resolution adopted at the ANC's 2007 Polokwane conference, as well as a media policy developed for its 2002 Stellenbosch conference.
The document is bound to be controversial, as it raises once again the possibility of establishing a statutory...
Saliem Fakir -
The furore over the Protection of Information Bill and its proposed draconian punishments for disclosing classified state documents belies a long simmering tension between the state and South Africa’s free press.
In the background of the parliamentary process to charge through the Bill sits the ANC’s proposal to establish a media tribunal. The resolution was proposed in Polokwane, supposedly to stop media excesses and abuse. After somewhat of a lull, the idea has been revived...
