Does SABC expect employees to lie to protect its reputation?

Now, I've never seen an SABC employment contract, but I'm now convinced that there must be just such a clause in the fine print because one of their staff is being hauled up to face an internal inquiry for bringing the SABC into disrepute precisely for not telling lies.

According to a report in Business Day, which I am far more inclined to believe than the now discredited SABC news department, SABC CEO Dali Mpofu told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communication that SAfm presenter John Perlman would not face dismissal for his conduct but would still undergo internal disciplinary proceedings.

Perlman, by the way, got into trouble for contradicting on air a denial by SABC spokesman Kaiser Kganyago that there was no blacklisting within the SABC. Which we all now know there was.

Disrepute

According to Business Day, Mpofu told members of Parliament that while this might have been good journalism, it brought the organisation into disrepute.

Which, in a nutshell, means that Perlman is to undergo disciplinary hearings for telling the truth. Because at no stage has anyone denied that what Perlman went on about was false or misleading.

And as for Mpofu deploring the "shallow and parrot journalism and falsification of information" about the goings-on within the SABC, all I can say is that there are many millions of South Africans who would not have called this parrot journalism or falsification but would have simply called it transparency. A word the SABC, after 70 years, still fails to understand.

That is assuming we all go along with the notion that we do live in a democracy where freedom of speech is encouraged, particularly when you have overwhelming proof that you are right. Just like Perlman did.

However, it seems that the fine print of SABC employment contracts, whether implicit or explicit, suggests otherwise.

Public ownership

I notice too, that Mr Mpofu is beginning to become extremely irritated at the print media in particularly continuously bashing away at the SABC.

Well, Sir, I have been commenting on the SABC for various media for the past 40 years, both positively and critically, and virtually every CEO or director general as they were called in the old days, has shared your frustration.

SABC is the national broadcaster. SABC is very high profile. SABC collects all the TV licence fees that its competitors don't share in. And for this reason the public owns the place and if they exercise their right to information on the SABC by supporting competing media, then those media have just as much a public mandate as you do.

And SABC, for decades, had a complete monopoly and used that monopoly mercilessly. It is still enjoying the fruits of that monopoly. And competing media don't much like it.

SABC enjoys a huge slice of the advertising cake and in spite of deregulation, is still the single biggest broadcast entity by far. And competing media don't much like it.

So, you will always get criticised, your every move will always be watched with unrelenting intensity. And the more you are tempted to cover things up and behave in the untransparent and secretive way of those directors general of the apartheid era, you will have journalists baying for your blood.

Get used to it.