ANC Manifesto Launch Coverage

All 3 news channels covered the ANC's Manifesto launch on Saturday (11 January).

The SABC's feed was also shown on SABC2, which is quite a downstep as the last ANC Manifesto launch was shown across all channels. Their coverage was just a feed of the actual events on stage the whole time, which at times weren't exactly appropriate for the whole nation to see (eg. reading out the names of the children performing and then their parents so that their parents can collect them afterwards).

eNCA's feed was anchored from a media suite/box in the Mangaung based stadium, where Justice Malala provided analysis along with a new analyst and senior anchor Dan Moyane anchoring from the studio. However, this analysis seemed to take more screen time than the actual event itself, which was quite frustrating as people tuned in for the event and not talking heads as it was happening. This drew some reaction from the online community as people took to Twitter to complain.

The station that made the most of these complaints is ANN7, who really seems to take advantage of others mistakes (because everyone laughs at theirs). They had their reporters retweeting complaints of people tweeting about what was happening on eNCA. Their coverage was quite welldone, anchored by Hajra Omarjee, a senior political analyst. However, one thing that did work in their favour is that they provided live coverage of the stampede outside of the stadium, which was a refreshing alternative to what was on the other stations.