KZN joins in the fight for media freedom

Event details: 12 noon - 1pm, Mansfield Hall, Steve Biko (Mansfield) Road. Parking on Ritson Road Campus, opposite the entrance to Sastri College/Curries Fountain, in Winterton Walk, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).

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Also in KZN, The Mercury, on the front page on Monday 16 August, launched a media freedom initiative - an urgent SOS to all citizens - asking readers to add their voices to the campaign by emailing their support to az.oc.lni@onyas, faxing +27 (0)31 308 2333 or sending an SMS, at standard rates, to 31455 and prefixing the message with SAYNO.

The newspaper intends to forward the responses to President Zuma.

Numbers

By 9.30pm on Monday night, The Mercury had received more than 722 emails, many of them with the names of more than one person who had come out in support of the campaign. By 10.15am this morning, that number had risen to 1369.

Faxes, also sometimes with multiple names per fax, have also started pouring in; the count at 10am this morning was 45. The fax number was published on Monday and again this morning; it was not published on Tuesday.

The SMS line, which was launched yesterday only, received 652 SMSes on that day.

According to editor Angela Quintal, the actual number of individual names are still to be collated and these figures are unaudited.