SABC staff fight for public mandate to stay

SABC editorial staff stood their ground as they fought hard to have the broadcaster retain its public service mandate that was fast being overtaken by ongoing commercialisation and profit-driving programming at the corporation.

They also called for the ring-fencing of the SABC newsroom against the arbitrary decisions of those in charge and to be able to provide news in the public interest rather than being pushed by commercial considerations.

In a virtual presentation to the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications on Tuesday, the SABC Staff Forum representative, Zolisa Sigabi, said as the editorial staff, they found themselves having to fight for the protection of the public service mandate, this time against commercialisation.

The group told the committee that SABC commercialisation was likely to erode the gains that had been made after many years of “corrosive editorial interference” in the newsroom. This was an apparent reference to the era of the controversial SABC former COO, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, and even during the apartheid regime’s political manipulation of SABC stations to suit the National Party agenda.

The Forum highlighted the distinction between the need to serve a public good versus the attempt to subvert the service which was primarily viewed as a commodity.

“We submit that the failure to treat news as a public good naturally undermines the public mandate to inform and educate a diverse spectrum of audiences across all languages and regions of South Africa, regardless of their social status, and without fear or favour,” Sigabi said.

“This is because where commercialisation is the primary interest, decisions about newsworthiness and content in general are greatly influenced by the profit motive, rather than the need to serve all sectors of society so that they can make informed decisions, in the interest of democracy.”

“Here our concern is whether there is an appreciation of the sacrosanct space meant to deliver the public mandate, and the awareness that any tampering with that space, in pursuit of profit-making is itself a subversion of democracy,” she added.

Despite the Broadcasting Act of 1999, providing for separately administered public and commercial services within the Corporation, the Act’s wording fails to protect the public, as may have been intended by the legislation’s drafters.

“We believe, this is where the problem lies and needs to be attended,” Sigabi said.

The Act also fell short of making an important clinical separation between the two divisions, because Part 3 of the Act (10) 2, also provided for the Corporation to draw revenues from advertising and sponsorships, among others. The Forum said this opened up space for commercial considerations where the public mandate was concerned.

“There is a conflict in the intent and our submission is that this incongruity does not help the drive to protect the public mandate, especially when it comes to the Newsroom. The failure to ring-fence this division, makes it vulnerable, among others, to decisions made on the whims of whoever is in charge, which is what we believe is the philosophy behind the proposed new Newsroom structure. The power of commerce and the needs to increase revenues will supersede the obligation to provide news in the public interest.”

Given the fact that commercialisation relies on the pursuit of revenues, which in turn is fundamentally about profit-maximisation, from a normative and practical sense, it is difficult to see how the public mandate can be effectively fulfilled, where the newsroom is not ring-fenced.

Decisions about News content will be made on the basis of whether they will bring in viewership or not, and not on the basis of their value to the public interest.

They blamed the drafters of the Act for the failure to make a clear separation the public and commercial services.

“They have not succeeded in coming up with a clinical division that would conveniently separate the two so as not to obstruct the public mandate.  This is because of the introduction of a window through which revenue-generation considerations could be made within the public service mandate.

“In the context of the newsroom, this is a dangerous provision which we have already seen debilitating the public mandate, as certain editorial decisions are made on the basis of whether desired content has potential to bring in revenues, as opposed to whether it is a public good and which the public has a right to receive.”

They lambasted the SABC’s massive chopping of important news and current affairs programmes which displaced the newsroom’s public mandate and opposed the pending closure of SABC regional offices. The group cited the reduction of SAFM current affairs hours in early 2018. The station management and the SABC Executive argued that current affairs was not drawing audiences and not making money.

Although the station removed the current affairs time slots, they replaced them with their own replica of Current Affairs, but mainly driven by talk format.

At Lesedi FM, in Bloemfontein, the midday show was reduced from an hour to 30 minutes and there was a failed attempt to reduce time slot of a current affairs programme on Munghana Lonene that was performing very well.

Some of the SABC’s offices, including the George office, would be closed, which meant the southern Cape and the Garden Route towns would not be covered anymore. This despite the fact that the office was specifically opened to service the communities between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town.

In the Eastern Cape, the Bisho office is being closed and is expected to be covered by Mthatha, which is situated about 300km away from the provincial capital.

“There is no logic, except a commercial one, that could influence this kind of decision-making. There was a reason why these offices had to be structured in the manner that they have. For instance, the Bisho office was specifically opened to cover then provincial legislature and the rural areas that fell under the former Ciskei area,” Sigabi said.

“This profit-seeking motive forces us to collapse our broader operations while at the same serves to undermine the various cultures, languages and voices that deserve to be heard from those diverse communities.”

“As the Editorial Forum, we believe that a lot is at stake in our democracy, and we cannot subject the SABC Newsroom to a situation where only economic control and attendant logic are determinants of what makes News. When audiences are commodified this not only results in decrease in real diversity, but also perpetuates the marginalisation of alternative voices as the public mandate gets subordinated to private or monied minority interests,” she said.

The Staff Forum urged Parliament to review the Broadcasting Act in order to properly separate and ring-fence the Newsroom from commercial services, speed up the debate around the funding model of the public broadcaster to avoid lack of resources being used as an excuse to push the Corporation ditch public service mandate.

The Forum suggested that a proper funding model would assist in ensuring that in drafting legislation such as the Broadcasting Act, the drafters were not compelled to make expedient provisions for the sustainability of the Corporation, which may be contrary to the requirements of a public service operation.

-Ericn@citizen.co.za

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