Under the controversial new leadership of the SABC's head of news Phil Molefe, the SABC News division is using precious minutes of screen time in TV news bulletins for specifically selected cause de celebre pet projects: from giving homes to the homesless in Cape Town, food to the hungry in squatter camps in Port Elizabeth and even sanity pads to school girls in Klipplaat. Of course sponsors and the names and their products get to feature prominently on screen. In so-called news coverage. As part of the so-called main, and most important news of the day.
Sally de Vasconcellos, executive producer of the News @ 7 on SABC3 must not have gone to real journalism school. She should rightly be ashamed at what she's allowing to happen to the struggling news bulletin, like again this evening.
If SABC News wants to help, then help. And shut up about it. Don't shamelessly self-promote, promote sponsors who know they're going to get free publicity (and in news no less!), and promote your social causes. A public should be spurred or moved to possible action by the straight facts of the news, not the social manufacturing of it. SABC News' Touching Lives campaign (although instigated with possibly good intentions) is misplaced, misguided, totally inappropriate, simply wrong, and a major disservice to what SABC News is supposed to be doing: serving the news.
