Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 18-10-2018
Wits Journalism Professor Anton Harber says that while some media houses were badly affected and damaged by state capture, calling for a media tribunal would be disastrous.
Harber was responding to a question by Radio Islam about the many calls by the African National Congress (ANC) whether media in South Africa should be allowed to self-regulate or not.
This issue has been on the governing party’s agenda for several years including at the party’s national conference at Nasrec in December last year.
Harber says investigative journalists played a huge, important and brave role in exposing state capture and then stopping it.
“If you have a media tribunal that keeps a tight hold on the media then the first thing they will stop are those who expose wrong things going on in government.”
This week the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) commissioned an investigation into editorial integrity following a meeting with the Tiso Blackstar management in light of the Sunday Times scandal.
The paper admitted that articles on the so-called Cato Manor death squad were part of a tainted scoops series in 2011 and have turned out to be largely false.
Harber believes the news media industry in South Africa needs to acknowledge that there is an industry-wide problem of trust and credibility arising out of the period of State Capture.
Listen to the interview with Wits Journalism Professor Anton Harber
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