Earlier this week, and often before, whenever there were events occuring in parliament the speaker of the house did not want to have seen by viewers at home, she would cut the video feed, blocking citizens of this country where "free press" and "transparency" is championed from observing the actions of publicly-elected officials in parliament.
The statement is below:
"Sanef Media Statement : November 14 2014
The SA National Editors Forum (Sanef) is disturbed by the continuing
interference with the audio and visual feeds from Parliament each time
there is chaos in the National Assembly.
On Thursday, the feed was cut off at a time when there were scuffles. This followed two other incidents on August 21 and last week when a member of the opposition was arguing with the Speaker ending with that Member being suspended. In this latter instance, the feed was manipulated to stay focussed on the Speaker, thus not allowing the public to get the full picture of the ongoings in the House.
Sanef on Monday dispatched a letter to the spokesperson of Parliament, Mr Luzuko Jacobs, protesting against the soft censorship that is creeping into the broadcasting of proceedings and has requested a meeting to discuss the issues and find lasting solutions that would allow media to fulfil its constitutional role of informing South Africans fully and in an unbiased manner.
Sanef reiterates its call for Presiding Officers in Parliament to ensure that there is no censorship of the debates in the House irrespective of the content of those debates and the need for Presiding Officers to protect the image of the House. We also call for a speedy arrangement of the meeting to fully discuss these issues. This more so that at a press conference convened by the presiding officers this morning (Friday), no clarity was provided about who ordered the feed to be cut."
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As a citizen of SA, I echo the sentiment expressed by SANEF and I must say I find it disturbing that I am being blocked from seeing what public officals are doing.
I remember a few weeks back with the initial "Pay back the money" debacle how all the news channels, and also the Parliamentary Service (DStv 408) lost their feed to parliament, and eNCA, who for some reason had access to the feed for a while after the others were reacting as if it was their luck that they were still being able to still have video access.
I mean, why, after 20 years of freedom does a news channel in this country still have to react like "wow, we can see what is happening in parliament." Should transparency today not be something that we should have gotten used to over 20 years of freedom? Why is this still an issue in our country?
I hope some official from parliament responds to the statement from SANEF.
On Thursday, the feed was cut off at a time when there were scuffles. This followed two other incidents on August 21 and last week when a member of the opposition was arguing with the Speaker ending with that Member being suspended. In this latter instance, the feed was manipulated to stay focussed on the Speaker, thus not allowing the public to get the full picture of the ongoings in the House.
Sanef on Monday dispatched a letter to the spokesperson of Parliament, Mr Luzuko Jacobs, protesting against the soft censorship that is creeping into the broadcasting of proceedings and has requested a meeting to discuss the issues and find lasting solutions that would allow media to fulfil its constitutional role of informing South Africans fully and in an unbiased manner.
Sanef reiterates its call for Presiding Officers in Parliament to ensure that there is no censorship of the debates in the House irrespective of the content of those debates and the need for Presiding Officers to protect the image of the House. We also call for a speedy arrangement of the meeting to fully discuss these issues. This more so that at a press conference convened by the presiding officers this morning (Friday), no clarity was provided about who ordered the feed to be cut."
===========================================================
As a citizen of SA, I echo the sentiment expressed by SANEF and I must say I find it disturbing that I am being blocked from seeing what public officals are doing.
I remember a few weeks back with the initial "Pay back the money" debacle how all the news channels, and also the Parliamentary Service (DStv 408) lost their feed to parliament, and eNCA, who for some reason had access to the feed for a while after the others were reacting as if it was their luck that they were still being able to still have video access.
I mean, why, after 20 years of freedom does a news channel in this country still have to react like "wow, we can see what is happening in parliament." Should transparency today not be something that we should have gotten used to over 20 years of freedom? Why is this still an issue in our country?
I hope some official from parliament responds to the statement from SANEF.
