Organisations advocating for media freedom have slammed the removal of the Russia Today news channel off their DSTV service, saying this was snatching away viewers' ability to determine the news that they want to consume.
This comes as MultiChoice, which owns DSTV and who aired RT on Channel 407 on their satellite television service, on Tuesday announced that they would not be carrying the channel on the DSTV platform until further notice.
MultiChoice explained that sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU had led to the global distributor of the channel ceasing to provide the broadcast feed to all suppliers around the world, including MultiChoice.
Samkelo Mokhine, executive director of Freedom of Expression Institute of South Africa (FXI) said this would leave viewers poorer and without freedom to choose what they want to believe.
Mokhine said that any choice that was taken away from the viewers when it came to different sources of information had an adverse impact on access to information.
“It's something that we would discourage and the viewing public will be the poorer for it. There's no reason why it (the RT channel) should not continue, and viewers should make their own decisions about what they believe and what they don't believe," Mokhine said.
He said that he would need further information on MultiChoice's explanation on the decision to stop the RT channel to see whether it holds water.
With growing discontent that MultiChoice was biassed to channels such as BBC and CNN, Mokhine said that whether South Africans liked it or not the country was hugely influenced by what happens in the West.
“One could’ve perhaps seen this coming in the sense that all these other Western countries are taking the stance that they are, that this would end up being something expected of South Africa with South Africa being so integrated into the Western media and one would expect that the pressure would be brought to bare on them to take a similar stance.
“It’s very interesting in the one sense that the country did not openly criticise Russia because of the links that they have, but when it comes to the other side on issues of the media the amount of pressure that would be on those entities would be really tremendous,” Mokhine said.
POLITICAL BUREAU