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who initially deals with complaints, dismissed 199, noted that 39 were withdrawn and 145 sent to the ombudsman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,

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