The media must not be held hostage by the pro-Israel lobby
Has President Jacob Zuma ever considered replacing his official spokesperson with David Saks of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies? Perhaps he should, for the two share an apparent desire to muzzle the media.
Zuma has many reasons to do so, and thus avoid media coverage of his corrupt administration. Fortunately, his government’s efforts to impose constraints on the media have not succeeded due to stiff resistance by the senior journalists’ organisation SANEF, among others. Is it required of the media to temper its so-called hostile stance on corruption and state capture, if Zuma considers it to be "unfair, lacking balance and harsh"? Does Zuma have a case?
As far as David Saks is concerned, this seems to be the demand that he is making in respect of media coverage of Israel. As reported in a local Jewish weekly, members of the Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) met in Cape Town last February with Iqbal Surve, the owner of Independent News and Media, to complain about "mounting anti-Israel bias of the Independent papers and specifically The Star and Cape Times."
Besides singling out two titles within the IOL stable, which many would view as a kind of witch hunt, Saks explains that their gripe is the "hostile manner in which Israel was being portrayed, and how, correspondingly, the views of radical anti-Israel lobby groups were being overtly promoted, in both news reports and opinion pieces."
Does this sound familiar? Such routine complaints are dismissed by the media fraternity when emanating from the presidency. After all, media professionals have to contend with reporting the harsh realities of South Africa's political landscape, whether Zuma likes it or not. Why, then, should there be a different response when the topic in question is the apartheid state of Israel?