The headline of Mdletshe's article is both misleading and creating false perceptions. Contrary to article 5.1 of the SA Press Code, the headline does not give reasonable reflection of the contents of the article in question. The article talks about centralisation of Government media buying, lack of Government advertising in community media and funding challenges faced by the community media. The headline suggests Manyi wants to control who gets state advertising money. The use of the words "Manyi after control" is distortion. This is in breach of Article 1.2 of the SA Press Code that reads: "News shall be presented in context and in a balanced manner, without any intentional or negligent departure from the facts whether by...distortion...". It is worth noting that the centralisation of Government media buying has been in operation since JUNE 2011 following a cabinet decision to bulk buy.
As a matter of fact, on the 14th April 2012, the GCIS convened Kwazulu-Natal Community Media Indaba held at the Durban City Hall and MDDA was in attendance and an active participant. It was attended by more than 70 people and around 35 community and small commercial media projects from the length and breadth of KZN. This forum provided community and small commercial media sector an opportunity to meet with GCIS and MDDA, share experiences, challenges and ideas on how best to support them and create an enabling environment for their sustainability. These sessions have also been held in the Free State (January 2012) and Western Cape (March 2012). At these sessions, both the GCIS and the MDDA engage with the community and small commercial media sector on the challenges they face, listen to their views on how to improve the sector and also to report on Government efforts and programmes aimed at ensuring that communities get access to information on service delivery and planned government programmes. These sessions enable all parties to map out a framework that would strengthen the role and the capacity of the community and small commercial media sector in reporting and informing communities about the developments as they unfold in their own areas.
At the KZN Indaba, the community and small commercial media strongly highlighted the challenge of operating with very limited resources which impact negatively on their daily operations and sustainability. The Indaba provided the practitioners an opportunity to raise challenges on access to both local, provincial and national government advertising including delays in processing payment of invoices. Practitioners from the community radio sector urged GCIS to develop a system that will enable them to download audio feeds from government press briefings as they have limited resources to send journalists to press conferences.
The Indaba also afforded the GCIS CEO, Jimmy Manyi an opportunity to update the community and small commercial media practitioners on the government communication programme and content sharing with the community media. Manyi noted that the GCIS is interested in community and small commercial media reflecting and reporting on bread and butter issues that face the communities on the ground. The GCIS committed that it will provide government information to the sector directly and for free.
The MDDA CEO, Lumko Mtimde, supported the centralised media buying model, stating that it will assist in accounting for Government adspent into the three categories of the media (community, commercial and public) and thereby ensure media diversity. Mtimde updated the practitioners on the MDDA interventions to secure advertising revenue for the sector through the planned online advertising booking system. He provided advice on how the sector can improve professionalism using technology and the importance of accountability. He also reported on the challenges facing community TV with respect to uncertainty in terms of regulation as a result of the digital migration. Mtimde urged the sector to differentiate itself from the mainstream media both in content and by definition, reflect diversity of views and opinions, diversity of languages, report on developments in the areas, source news and information from diverse sources rather relying on one source and promote local content.
At the end of the Indaba it was agreed that the GCIS and the sector in the KZN will convene bi monthly networking session in order to improve working relations and sharing information.
