Friday, 07 July 2006
The South African Communist Party (SACP) welcomes the announcement that our public broadcaster South African Broadcasting Cooperation (SABC) is preferred broadcaster of the 2010 and 2014 FIFA world cup final.
As the SACP we are proud that our public broadcaster is to play such an important role in such a significant sports events.
The SACP has always supported an independent public broadcaster funded by the state. We are however concern that the 80% of the SABC revenue is derived from advertising by the private sector.
This constitutes the single biggest threat to the building of a public broadcaster that is fair and objective in its coverage of news. We therefore wish to reiterate our call that the public broadcaster be predominantly funded by the state. Let us use this occasion to pump more state resources into the public broadcaster.
The declaration of the SABC as the preferred broadcaster by FIFA also underlines the importance of the SABC not allowing itself to be used for factionalist purposes inside our movement.
The investigations into blacklisting of certain commentators, which we welcome, must be comprehensive, thorough and the findings be made public. This is important in order to ensure that our public broadcaster has the confidence of the overwhelming majority of South Africans.
Issued by: SACP
Contact:
SACP Spokesperson
Maleka Malesela
Tel: 011 339 3621
Fax: 011 339 4244
Cell: 082 226 1802
Email: malesela@sacp.org.za