SABC ditches Big Debate

18 Oct 2013

NEWSWATCH: Mail & Guardian reports that the SABC has pulled The Big Debate show - which is billed as 'holding our leaders to account and giving a voice to ordinary residents and communities' - allegedly because it was 'incorrectly commissioned'.

For more:

Mail & Guardian: SABC cites 'editorial oversight' as reason for pulling 'Big Debate'... Cynics might be forgiven for suggesting that our national "have-we-got-happy-news-for-you!" broadcaster should "pull the other one".

The telling point might be what the show is billed as doing, namely "holding our leaders to account and giving a voice to ordinary residents and communities".

Heaven forbid that our leaders should have to suffer a blow-by-blow account of where communities think they are screwing up. That simply would not do, and tends to go against the grain of the policy voiced by Hlaudi Motsoeneng who wants 70% of the news to be "good news", as opposed to what we suppose might be that tiresome and irritating moaning about no service delivery, corruption, mismanagement, certain premiers keeping the odd fast-food chain here and there on their toes with tasty titbits, and so on.

According to Mail & Guardian, the SABC's head of group communications Kaizer Kganyago said yesterday that: "It is against the policies of the SABC to outsource news and current affairs. Editorial responsibility for all news and current affairs content is vested in the newsroom."

Now cynics might look on that with some satisfaction - at least they will know exactly where to place the blame when they reckon news reporting and current affairs programs do not measure up to what is expected of what should be a professional organisation, run by professionals.

All this... and the new board has barely warmed their seats.

Rod Baker

About Rod Baker

Rod Baker is Content Director at Bizcommunity.com. A journalist since before computers, he worked on a wide range of magazines and, in his youth, rose through the ranks from being a lowly and abused sub-editor, to a high and still abused editor and publisher. He has been editor and publisher of a number of magazines, as well as a newspaper. He has edited many books, and written a number too. Email him at moc.ytinummoczib@dor.