Cooper said there was no editorial interference. He told the Daily Maverick that he was a fan. “Phathiswa made a contribution to the strategic planning meeting of the board. This message came out of that,” says the teacher. It was then that we talked about it, and I came up with this idea. News stories don’t go in front of the board. The planning session had talked about how the SABC could get to Ramaphosa.See the source image
People didn’t like each other very much by December. Because of an episode of Special Assignment on SABC 3 about towing that was aired when it should not have been. That’s not what she said, though. She said this was to cover up a lot of political pressure from the ANC on the SABC, which came to a head in the last weekend before the November 2021 local elections.
She said Magopeni was getting a lot of attention from the book. The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) is very strict with the SABC. It has to follow special election media laws. It is the public broadcaster, so it has to show all the different political parties in the same way. Magopeni said that ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe talked with Mxakwe and Makhathini to get the ANC extra attention.See the source image
It was a disaster when Magopeni refused to meet with Ramaphosa as ANC president at a stopover on the Limpopo leg of the campaign trail when all hell broke loose. Magopeni says that because she didn’t break election plans, stood up for best practices, and defended her political staff, she was instead charged with breaking the interdict, which is a crime in Guatemala.
Magopeni said that some board members were getting in the way of editorial decisions, and that her response to Cooper was a standard one.
“This is how I have always dealt with all board members who share information with the goal of getting coverage.” I accept, thank you, and move on when I get something. I don’t know how an interview with Dr. Motsepe came about when the President was unable to come to the meeting. But I had to deal with this. “I want to point out that Prof. Cooper is on the Special Committee that will decide my case,” she says.See the source image
Both Mxakwe and Makhathini have given out dossiers of information, according to Justine Limpitlaw in this article from the New York Times. Supported Magopeni in the new era at the SABC, they say. They also released WhatsApp messages from her in which she thanked them and used them as advice.
Joe Thloloe, Barney Mthombothi, the late Allister Sparks, and Ameen Akhalwaya have all been editor-in-chiefs in the past. They all had to deal with editorial interference from boards and political pressure. South Africa’s public square journalism is still led by the SABC, which is still the biggest and most powerful news source in the world.
Both Mabe and Fikile Mbalula took a scythe to Magopeni after the ANC had a terrible election in November 2021. Jessie Duarte, the deputy secretary-general of the ANC, publicly criticized the editor-in-chief at the national results center in November. Mxakwe filed a separate complaint with the IEC about this.
Magopeni says that after she turned down an interview with Ramaphosa, her relationship with both of them changed.See the source image
In October 2021, Makhathini told me that the ANC President would be making his way to the SABC. I asked him what he was coming to do, since SABC News didn’t have an interview with him set up at the time. A question: Is it possible that the ANC President will not be able to interview him on the SABC if he doesn’t show up? Do you think that from a News point of view, the interview did not go over well? She also said Makhathini tried to get the SABC to cover the Zulu succession battle in a way that made it look like he was being impartial when she found it to be partisan. She said that his dossier made it look like he was being impartial when she found it to be partisan.
Media coverage of the royal family’s fight for power was biased, and Mr Makhathini said that one media company was an example of this. People were not telling the story of the other side of the family, he said. King Misuzulu kaZwelithini didn’t have the skills to lead AmaZulu. The next part of the story explained why that was. They were not happy with him, he said.See the source image
His opinion: “Mr. Makhathini said the King had a problem and was not good enough to lead Isizwe samaZulu.” On June 7, 2021, he shared a 1-hour-54-minute audio clip from a royal family meeting about the King’s “problem,” which he thought made him ineligible for the job, says Magopeni.
Magopeni agreed that she and Makhathini had had a good relationship. He was involved in organizing the interview with Mr. Ramaphosa even though we had previously had a good relationship with him. His insistence made me think that he was taking advantage of us. “They both pressured and bullied me without success into agreeing to the unplanned interview and skipping certain editorial processes,” said Magopeni, who worked for the newspaper.
He also said that Magopeni had messed up an editorial retrenchment plan that put the broadcaster at risk. Statement: Her statement says that management messed up the process and made people nervous. She says this is not true.See the source image
“I had less than 30 minutes to talk about a process that would change people’s lives and careers for good.” CCMA records should back this up. Unions and other people who work for people didn’t have a chance to ask any questions about my presentation during that meeting.
This caused a lot of people to be unhappy and anxious, because they didn’t have a chance to ask questions about their problems directly. Anyone who had thought about what they were doing before they did it would have known this was wrong.” She also got into a fight with her bosses over plans to close the SABC Pretoria office as part of a cost-cutting plan.
“I said that anyone who knows how important a public news service is in any country would know that SABC News can’t be without a presence in the capital city.” This is where the government is, as well as where international representatives come to meet with people. I said that it would be impossible for the BBC to not have a presence in London at all.See the source image
An inquiry by the board will hear Magopeni’s complaint. The SA National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) has said that the inquiry should be held in public. Nazeer Cassim, the chair of the Special Assignment disciplinary case against her in December 2021, live-streamed the hearing. Cassim found her guilty on one of three charges brought by the broadcaster. This is how it went: He thought the process was fair, and he thought Magopeni had a lot of time to deal with the issue “sensibly.” “Ms. Magopeni is the person who should have taken the right steps to make sure that the court order (interdicting the episode of Special Assignment) the court order was obeyed.”
Cassim found her guilty of misconduct and said that she should be warned and retract a statement that was very critical of the process. Fired her before she could. No one from the SABC answered the Daily Maverick’s question about them. Was it because you had already been accused of something?
Magopeni said: I first talked about internal interference in an interview I did on Morning Live on October 29, 2021, four days after I turned down the interview with Ramaphosa.See the source image
When I talk about internal interference and imposed interviews in this YouTube link, I don’t give names because politicians wanted stories changed that I talked about in the interview, and I didn’t do that with them either, which is why I didn’t do it. It was filed on November 29, 2021. If you had about 1000 people working for you, it should have been the top thing on your to-do list when you got an interdict on a TV show.
How did we make sure that the episode that was canceled did not air? From September 14 to October 26, 2021, every effort was made to make sure that the episode didn’t air. On October 26, out of nowhere, the episode came back.
On that day, the story editor for Special Assignment had given clear instructions on the episode that was going to be shown that evening, with the title Still Waiting and the codes that were given to the schedulers by SABC3. As part of the hearing, some things about how SABC3 ended up with an episode that was not correct were revealed. But there is no evidence that the same mistake won’t happen again because the same code was used to schedule two different stories by SABC3.See the source image
Afterward, news can’t do anything with the material. Clear instructions were given for the episode that was supposed to air that evening, but somehow the interrupted episode went on air. To this point, no investigation has been done to find out how that story came to air, how the codes got mixed up at scheduling, and how to keep it from happening again.
Justine Limpitlaw’s article says that the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) found that the interview your team did with suspended ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule had a lot of bad editing. How did it happen, and why did it take so long for them to say sorry?
Journalists tried to use the interview to try to get the SABC to stop laying people off. It didn’t have any facts to back it up and was very emotional. Justine worked for Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) and the SOS Coalition at the BCCSA. Even after the appeal, she is still very unhappy with the decision. We usually wait until the process is over and the outcome is known before we act.See the source image
Exactly one day after the Magashule interview, editors talked about the problems that came up from the interview, and steps were taken to figure out how to deal with them in the future. This has been done.
In my presentation to the BCCSA, I told them that I broke editorial policy right away. Our argument was based on the highly charged environment, the unique circumstances in which the interview took place, the risks that come with live interviews, and the difficulties that come with controlling them. I also talked about the steps we took to make sure this didn’t happen again, like having regular workshops on editorial policies for the newsroom. They took everything into account.
Justine wanted the journalists who did the interview to be well-behaved, as well as the people who made the Full View show that aired the interview. Their other request was to fine the News division R80K and say sorry to the SABC president and everyone else who watched it.
People who wanted us to apologize didn’t get what they wanted from the BCCSA. They wanted us to pay a R10,000 fine and read the BCCSA’s final verdict, not apologize. We did what was told us to. People who belong to the MMA/SOS Coalition have taken the BCCSA to court because they are still not happy with the way things are going. DM