It’s about monitoring and enforcing adherence to the “government brand”, Manyi says. The advertising of all government departments would likely be centralised in his office very soon. The predictable news emerged while Manyi was speaking at a community media indaba on Saturday.

Presently, all 34 governmental departments have control over their own funds for advertising. They are all also in charge of their own advertising spend, and appoint their own advertising agency, too.

Manyi said:

At a national level we are trying to have a model where all departments will give their advertising to one centre – the Government Communication and Information Services (GCIS). Once this model has been adopted, GCIS will then be the one to distribute adverts accordingly.

The notion of funding and lack of government advertising in community media had also been discussed by the GCIS and the Media Development Agency at the indaba.

This was done with community representatives, who have complained that government was ignoring them when allocating advertising.

They say, instead of choosing to place their advertisements with them, government departments place advertising with mainstream media, at a much greater cost.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Independent reported yesterday that Lulama Mokhobo, SABC CEO, threatened disciplinary action against Head of News, Phil Molefe, for refusing to submit a news diary to her every day.

Molefe has been on special leave since last week, and it was reported that his decision to withhold the news diary may have had political reasons.

However, Sanef’s Chairperson, Mondle Makanya, was concerned at the revelations that Molefe may have had political motives for his actions, and said Mokhobo was now probably acting on “a mandate from some higher political authority” herself.

He warned editorial independence would be violated, if media executives demanded daily diaries from the newsroom.

[Source: TimesLive]