South Africa: Should print follow model of broadcasting regulation? [opinion]

After much criticism of the media by the ANC, the South African National Editor’s Forum has said it is willing in principle to look at ways to strengthen and improve the Press Council of South Africa and the Press Ombudsman, but is deeply concerned over the ANC’s aggressive stance towards the industry. But in looking at precedents, should the print media take seriously the ANC’s comparison of the broadcast media and the print media’s methods of regulation?

The ANC has reasoned that print regulation could be improved by the establishment of a statutory institution “established through an open public and transparent process, and … made accountable to the Parliament of South Africa.” This “Media Appeals Tribunal” could assist the Press Council with rulings, “in the same way as it happens in the case of broadcasting through the Complaints and Compliance Committee (CCC) of ICASA” - the Independent Communication’s Authority of South Africa, a statutory body. If it works for broadcasting, surely it could work for print, and be an improvement on the current laborious and time-intensive process employed by the Press Council, and the expensive alternative of the courts? This line of argument is, however, misleading.

 

The Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) has had an understanding with ICASA since 1993 to oversee a majority of complaints brought against licensees belonging to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the private association that groups almost all  TV and radio broadcasters. BCCSA is an independent industry mandated body that oversees almost all complaints brought by the public against broadcast media.

 

On some levels, broadcasting regulation in South Africa, apart from spectrum and license issues, is managed in a remarkably similar way to the Press Council. ICASA’s Complaints and Compliance Committee actually has very little to do with rulings on the content offered to the public by the NAB. Last year, the BCSSA dealt with roughly 1800 complaints related to broadcaster’s content, while the CCC, which deals mainly with license contraventions, adjudicated nine cases in the year 2008/2009, according to their 2009 annual report and six in the 2009/2010 financial year, according to Paseka Maleka of ICASA.

 

The BCCSA looks at complaints in respect to the Code of Conduct for Broadcasters for those broadcasters who belong to the NAB, says Maleka. For those license holders who aren’t signatories of the NAB – a minority of broadcasters in South Africa - “non-compliance with content is adjudicated by CCC. In this case, there is a memorandum of understanding that exists between ICASA and BCCSA,” Maleka says.

 

The fact that broadcasters require licenses, because spectrum is limited, also means that the two industries operate on quite different paradigms, says Kobus van Rooyen, chairperson of the BCCSA.

 

Unlike the Press Council, the BCCSA can issue fines to its members stations. ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu has said Press Council rulings are not “punitive” enough, and do not deter newspapers from committing the same errors repeatedly. Perhaps the answer is to give the Press Council the power to issue fines. The BCCSA has, however, only issued 40 fines since 1993, despite processing over 17 000 complaints, says Van Rooyen.

 

This low number of fines could perhaps be put down to the relatively strict adherence of broadcasters to the Broadcaster’s Code, as their licenses may be revoked by ICASA if they repeatedly fail to follow the Code. This has not happened once in the BCCSA’s existence, but herein lies the essential difference between the print and broadcast industries – a difference the ANC fails to acknowledge.

 

Newspapers do not require licenses, at least not in established democracies across the world. A majority of complaints brought against broadcasters relate to programme content that people consider offensive on moralgrounds (sex, nudity and so on), while complaints against newspapers often involve highly complex legal issues and require the Press Ombudsman to examine the process of reporting, fact gathering and due diligence taken by the newspaper in publishing a story.

 

The CEO of the Media Development and Diversity Agency, Lumko Mtimde has written in support of the argument that the tribunal could work in a similar way to the ICASA and BCCSA relationship. “The proposed Media Appeals Tribunal clearly will not be state-controlled and will not be a pre-publication censorship mechanism, instead it is proposed as an institution to oversee complaints lodged against those who may violate the Press Council Code of Conduct for citizens who may not be satisfied with a ruling of the Press Ombudsman and Press Council,” wrote Mtimde for ANC Today.

 

But the relationship between ICASA and the BCCSA is unique and cannot be used as a comparison with the print media, or a possible relationship between the Press Council and a “complementary” statutory Media Appeals Tribunal. It would be akin to saying that the MAT would distribute licenses for newspapers – unheard of in a democracy – and the Press Council would oversee all complaints except those in which license regulations are contravened. In these cases, the MAT, a body mandated by parliament, which is mainly made up of ANC representatives, may have the power to remove licenses or apply substantial financial punishments to erring newspapers.

 

Professor Jane Duncan of Rhodes University, and former executive director of the Freedom of Expression Institute, describes the analogy of print to broadcasting as “false”.

 

“There are grounds for statutory intervention in the broadcast media, as these media use a public resource, the frequency spectrum, to purvey their messages,” says Duncan. “Therefore you need to regulate through statute and the establishment of a regulator to ensure that this public resource is used in the public interest and not for private or other sectional benefits only.”

 

“There are dangers of limitation of freedom of expression through statutory intervention, but that is why the job of regulation is given to an independent regulator, “she says. “The print media, on the other hand, do not use a public resource to purvey their messages. Potentially, anyone can publish, so there are no grounds for statutory intervention in this form of media.”

 

Several other industries in South Africa that do not deal in limited resources are self-regulated in much the same way – but even these industries cannot be compared side-by-side as the services they offer, and the way they deliver these services, are unique from each other - much as the way print and broadcast media deliver content differently.

 

For the print and online media, self-regulation is best practice internationally, wrote Mail & Guardian ombudsman Franz Kruger for the paper recently. Confidence in self-regulation is “reflected in the African Union’s ‘Statement of Principles on Freedom of Expression’ which was accepted in Banjul in 2002: “Effective self-regulation is the best system for promoting high standards in the media”.  ANC spokespeople have been unable to point to any democracy which uses a tribunal of this kind.”

 

-August 13, 2010 by Wits Journalism Programme

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Source: www.journalism.co.za/news-and-insight/insight/89/3416-should-print-follow-model-of-broadcasting-regulation.html  (accessed on 23.08.10)