Parliament – The Association of Independent Publishers (AIP) on Tuesday questioned government’s decision to give community radio stations 30 percent of its advertising spend while only seven percent went to community newspapers.
AIP executive director Louise Vale said the association had raised the issue repeatedly with Government Communications and Information Systems (GCIS), the agency that controls the spending, but to no avail.
“We have given presentations, which they asked for, and then nothing happens,” she said after briefing Parliament’s portfolio committee on communications.
Vale said that as a starting point the print sector would like to receive as much as the country’s 255 community radio stations.
AIP found passionate support from the Economic Freedom Fighters’ national spokesman Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, who said it was misguided of government to give more monetary support to community broadcasters than to their print equivalent.
“It is accepted that the written word engages people’s minds on a more intellectual level, that it is superior to other forms of media,” he argued.
The AIP also said they were aggrieved by the fact that government spent just over R7 million on advertising in the country’s 210 community newspapers last year, but in a single financial year, 2013/14, it gave the New Age newspaper R10,2 million in advertising revenue out of a grand total of R90.7 million. In the previous year the figure for advertising revenue allocated to the pro-government newspaper owned by the Gupta family was R125 million.
A board member of the association, Mbali Dhlomo, said it was not acceptable, adding that this view had been clearly conveyed to the communications ministry.
Moses Moyo, the publisher of Johannesburg’s Inner-City Gazette, said Minister Faith Muthambi had defended giving the New Age the benefit of a large slice of the state’s advertising budget, despite its relatively low circulation, by saying that it was “part of supporting new media enterprises to create diversity”.
The chairwoman of the National Association of Broadcasters, Wilma van Schalkwyk, told the committee that GCIS and the Media Development and Diversity Agency were also not sufficiently even-handed in their allocation of revenue to community radio stations.
She said certain stations more readily accessed funding than others because GCIS did not adequately communicate what resources were available, and their application process was excessively onerous for small, short-staffed outfits.
African News Agency