SELFLESS TRIBUNAL???

The proposed Media Tribunal, is a selfless travesty to a selfless course to our struggle, and contradicts everything that the African National Congress stood for and stands for today. A tyrannical era of passive and sporadic semi-armed resistance was fought to attain a Democratic, Liberal South African State. What is self-governance and freedom, when the politicians that govern our country want their actions and unruly discretion go clandestinely unnoticed and untouched? Where is freedom in that notion?

Media freedom, is an essential cornerstone to what is known as Democracy. It is the strength that keeps political and social relations flowing in a harmonious plateau. Media freedom is a partner to breathing, living developmental policies of our Constitution. The Constitution enshrines the seeds that will build our country into the best Nation in the world, including the transparency to the dissemination of information, without bias or prejudice ideals.

Media Tribunals are aimed at denying South African journalists their freedom to impart societal and political information about corruptions and corrupt individuals. Placing objective reportage in a bad subverted view, is an undeniably imprudent and inhumane, dictatorial stance that has subjected journalists around the world with unnecessary torture and destructive imprisonment. Where is a Selfless Struggle there?

When a governing cabinet constructs a Democratic State, from a directive of a solid Constitution, with corrupt individuals standing in the shadows, trying to undermine the power and control of the hand that voted it to power, by overlooking and substituting its demands to a better life; to jobs, housing, good health plans and education, with acquiring wealth and going to overseas tax-sponsored holiday trips with hedging diplomatic reasons, without considering what their position and duty is to the very masses that helped to construct the Democratic State, with a directive of a solid Constitution. Then, that individual’s pillaging mentality, needs to be placed in the public eye for scrutiny.

The Media’s Ombudsman and other regulatory ‘watchman’s judgmental heads are the only heads that have to reign over journalists without imposing or denying the media its fundamental right to do its job. Journalist who falsify information, are not the only ones that are guilty of that falsification. The responsibility of clarifying information falls with the person that gave information, the journalist that acquired that particular information, the sub-editor and the editor that has to check for the authenticity or source of that particular information before it goes to print. Why should political parties regulate the media, when the media has the Press Ombudsman and the Press Council?

South Africa has come a long way to emulate the ways of Zimbabwe or the ways of Cuba. The responsibility to what future generations of our land will have to deal with, starts with how we view our society - politicians included. The Media’s freedom is linked with the freedom to speak, write and acquire information without infringing on other human beings’ right to life, and National Security. An ideal to a selfless struggle does not exempt an individual from a lawful reprimand when a white-collar crime has been committed and when National Security has been compromised.

WORD TO A NEW FAIR MEDIA REGULATORY REVOLUTION

By Linda Sakazi Thwala