SANEF WELCOMES APPEALS PANEL DECISION ON HATE SPEECH CASE
The SA National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) welcomes this week’s ruling by the Appeals Panel of the Press Council of SA which served to uphold the values of the constitution when it comes to media freedom and hate speech.
In a victory for freedom of expression, Judge Bernard Ngoepe set aside Ombudsman Johan Retief’s earlier ruling that comments contained in an opinion article published in Huffington Post South Africa earlier this year were discriminatory and amounted to hate speech.
The judge found that the Ombudsman had “erred” in ruling that the article had violated articles 5.1 and 5.2 of the Press Council code.
The article in question – “Could it be time to deny white men the franchise” was published on 13 April. It stirred up a storm of controversy after it emerged that the post was a hoax and the blogger a fake.
In upholding the appeal lodged by the former editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, Verashni Pillay - on the specific matter related to hate speech and unfair discrimination - the judge said that for an article to constitute hate speech, it needs to not only advocate hatred but also incite to cause harm.