Sanef worried after Russian news channel taken off DStv

The SA National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) has expressed concern about the “suppression” of news channels reporting on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  

“This ranges from silencing independent news channels within Russia to channels such as RT [formerly Russia Today or Rossiya Segodnya] removed on the MultiChoice platform in SA,” Sanef said on Thursday.

MultiChoice said on Wednesday that sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU led to the global distributor of the channel ceasing to provide the broadcast feed to suppliers, including MultiChoice.

Sanef said disinformation was a global problem, with deception techniques becoming more complex and sophisticated, causing confusion and having the effect of undermining human rights and democracy.

“That is why news organisations have the responsibility to counter built-in bias and be impartial in their reports.”

Sanef said RT is a Russian state-controlled international television network funded by Russian taxpayers and is widely perceived as a state propaganda tool.

“It is nevertheless a source of information from Russia that viewers could access, along with other channels, to critically assess its credibility and information for themselves.”

Media Monitoring Africa director William Bird said as a general rule censoring a channel is not good for freedom of expression, even if it is biased and disseminates propaganda.

“Disinformation is different and that can and should be acted upon. As I understand it, the EU still has to provide legal justification for their decision — which outside of it being war I think will be tricky,” he said.

When the EU announced the suspension of the broadcasting activities of Sputnik and RT  in the EU on Wednesday, it said the suspension would last until the aggression against Ukraine ends.

“Systematic information manipulation and disinformation by the Kremlin is applied as an operational tool in its assault on Ukraine,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Wednesday.

Sanef condemned the bombing of a Ukrainian TV tower in Kyiv which now prevents citizens accessing one of their news sources.

Russian strikes on the Kyiv TV tower brought down the main tower in the nation’s capital, killing five people on Tuesday and knocking out some state broadcasting.

“This violates the rights of media workers in this conflict. While we support freedom of access to a diversity of views, we do not support disinformation on any channels and appeal to all to report factually, impartially and truthfully for the benefit of their audiences,” Sanef said.

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