to be replaced by a digital-only online publication. In addition staff were retrenched. On the positive side, complaints by the public to the Press Council and its Press Ombudsman that publications contravened the Press Code totalled 499, 37 fewer than the 536 received in 2016 and 92 fewer than the 591 received in 2015. The Public Advocate, the official who initially deals with complaints, dismissed 199, noted that 39 were withdrawn and 145 sent to the ombudsman who made 137 findings, in which he too dismissed a number of grievances. Among the findings of the Press Ombudsman against the media was a strongly-worded order on the Huffington Post South Africa, launched in 2016 by the Media24 publishing house, to apologise to the public for publishing a ‘’racist and sexist’’ blog titled Could It Be Time To Deny White Men The Franchise? that was viewed as inciting hate speech. Ombud Johan Retief said the paper had violated numerous sections of the Press Code and had “contributed to the erosion of public trust in the media”. He also found that the Huffington Post had accepted without checking that the blog was written by a supposed feminist researcher Shelley Garland. It later emerged that Garland was a pseudonym for Centre for Development and Enterprise researcher Marius Roodt, who said he had done so because he wanted to make a point about lack of fact-checking in the media and the fact that, in his view, white voices were being drowned out. Editor Verashni Pillay resigned after the scathing ruling of the Ombud, but later appealed the finding. On 22 August, the Appeals Panel of the Press Council chaired by Judge Bernard Ngoepe upheld the appeal by the former 90 So This is Democracy? 2017 editor-in-chief, and set aside Retief’s ruling. On the specific matter related to hate speech and unfair discrimination, the judge said that for an article to constitute hate speech, it needs to not only advocate hatred but also incite to cause harm. “It could well be that the piece irritated or annoyed some people; but to classify it as a hate speech would be too huge a jump,” said Ngoepe. The Ombud did not deal with Roodt’s subterfuge. BROADCASTING The year began with a series of positive developments indicating that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was headed for conversion into a genuine public broadcaster. A parliamentary ad hoc committee had conducted hearings into the SABC, which started late in 2016 and ended early in 2017. The institution was subjected to systematic, sustained and well-researched scrutiny on a wide range of key aspects that had led to it being labelled an organisation in the clutch of an unprofessional clique who used it to pursue questionable interests. These activities, which included improper editorial instruction and censorship, contributed to the SABC’s losses of approximately R1 billion in 2016/17. The committee had heavily criticised then Communications Minister, Faith Muthambi. The SABC board, which had countenanced these activities was dismissed and replaced first by an interim and then a full-term board which drastically cut the losses and showed clear signs of wanting to be accountable. The minister who succeeded Muthambi, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane, the third minister in 2017, according to the SOS Support Public Broadcasting Coalition,