The highly respected prof. Jane Duncan has written about the government's proposed new Public Services Broadcasting Bill and calls it an ''exercise in maldevelopment''.
In her writing an the website for the South African Civil Society Information Service which you can READ RIGHT HERE in full, Duncan who is Highway Africa Chair of Media and Information Society at the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University, says that with the bill the Department of Communications wants to ''exercise undue control over the SABC and the community media sector''.
''These attempts at control are dangerous,'' she writes and states that it might compromise the SABC's editorial independence.
She writes that ''the Bill makes some attempt to address . . . deficiencies in the media system'' and that ''the proposed changes to the SABC's funding base are progressive, and should be supported.''
She writes that should the Bill become law, it will in her opinion ''probably heighten the SABC's culture of editorial timidity, where anything considered too hot to handle is shelved.''
