The government is going to be launching its own printed propagand… err newspaper, and it will be published by the head of government communications, Jimmy Manyi. Yes, Jimmy who doesn’t like coloured people that much. Basically we shouldn’t get our hopes up and expect much investigative journalism.

As reported in morning spice earlier, the government’s bi-monthly magazine, Vuk’uzenzele, is going to be turned into a monthly tabloid newspaper with Manyi’s vision being to possibly even publish daily in the future.

Manyi has also not decided whether he will allow advertising to be sold in the newspaper that will be out next month.

Realising that the selling of advertising would lighten the financial burden on us, the taxpayers, who will pay for this newspaper to be printed, he used “clutter” as the excuse.

It might create confusion. Don’t be surprised if we don’t allow commercial advertising.

The newspaper will be published in all 11 of our official languages too with the print run for the 20-odd pager being between 1.7 million and two million. Don’t forget there won’t be a cover price either. Jimmy continues,

We want it on the streets, in every township and rural area. It will be bigger than all of you guys put together.

There is of course always the flipside of the coin. And the flipside, according to Jimmy, is that we as journalists decide what government information to publish, often neglecting aspects that need publishing.

Jane Duncan, a media professor at Rhodes University, agreed slightly in that currently the totality of South African opinion is not well represented, but that a government newspaper was not the answer.

One can surmise that the government is hoping to establish a paper that will crowd out the critical voice of newspapers and give its activities a positive gloss.

What we do know however, is that Trevor Manuel probably won’t be in the “letters” section and Kuli Roberts might get a column.

[Source: CityPress]