SECTOR 3 3.5 The editorial independence of the state/public broadcaster from political influence is guaranteed by law and practised to ensure balanced and fair news and current affairs programmes. The law does not guarantee editorial independence and in practice it is even worse. The Office of the President regulates Botswana Television and other state media. “The top people have to come and see any news before it goes on air to check if it is politically correct; if not, they have to remove or replace it with something less controversial. I don’t think they themselves know who the head of news is. The Permanent Secretary calls the shots.” There was an incident when the President of the ruling party [as the president of the Party] was allowed to read out a statement on state media regarding a court ruling. A member of the opposition then asked the NBB for permission to read out a statement on behalf of his party on the same court ruling as there was a provision that allowed all political parties equal coverage and equal airtime. It is believed that it was at this point that the government started working on transforming the public broadcaster into a state broadcaster. “They took it out of the NBB mandate and said ‘this is a state broadcaster now so those laws don’t apply’. Then BOCRA came about, where everything is managed.” “In December 2012, a colleague of mine who works at BTV wanted to run a story about the treasurer of the ruling party, who was having problems at his farm. While I was having a drink with him, he received a call that flustered him. On ending the call he said that he had to get back to the office. When I asked why, he said that he had to pull a story as he had been called to be told that he couldn’t run the story he was intending on running. So he had to go and take that story out of the line-up. The story never came out. The treasurer had called his connections and asked them to do something to pull the story from the line-up.” So Botswana doesn’t pretend to have a public broadcaster. It is quite obvious it is a state broadcaster. Under the law BTV is not obliged to act as a ‘public’ broadcaster. 48 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER Botswana 2014