Black Friday for the SABC
Today (July 1) a frenzy of media practitioners are gathering in front of the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town in an event known as Black Friday.
The picket will take place to protest the suspension of three senior journalists by the SABC as they will face a disciplinary hearing today.
The journalists allegedly disagreed with the national broadcaster’s decision not to broadcast a protest aimed at the SABC itself.
The Need2Know (N2K) campaign protested the SABC’s judgement not to broadcast future violent protests as it argues that it could incite violence in the general public.
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Media practitioners, as well as the N2K movement perceive this as media censorship and a barrier to South Africa’s constitutional right to free media.
N2K also accused the SABC’s acting Chief Operating Officer (COO), Hlaudi Motsoeneng, of turning the state broadcaster into a “propaganda machine”.
The events follow the resignation of the SABC’s acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Jimi Matthews, on the social media platform Twitter.
The former CEO stated that the SABC’s “corrosive atmosphere has impacted negatively on [his] moral judgment and has made [him] complicit in many decisions which [he is] not proud of”.
