Questions for discussion

• How should the MDA address the challenge of creating greater diversity in broadcasting?
• How should the MDA be structured to address diversity in the broadcasting sector?
• Which broadcasting projects should it support? How?
• How should the broadcasting industry contribute to the support of new media? What role should the MDA play?
• What could be the relationship between the MDA, and existing or planned subsidy schemes such as the Community Development Trust (Department of Communications) and the Kgaso Fund?
• What should be the relationship between the MDA and the Independent Broadcasting Authority
• And the SABC?

Presentation of group discussion by Lebo Mokgethi, National Community Media Forum

Thank you, Jane. My name is Lebo Mokgethi from the National Community Media Forum. I think I'm familiar to most of the people here. This was a controversial commission. The issues here, straight and clear and sensational and ambitious as they are.

Firstly we had a lot of debate and very interesting debate on the issue - I mean, the word itself, the media diversity, what do we mean by media diversity. There were a lot of inputs from different members to say how should diversity go about and how this should impact in terms of the MDA, what role should it play in terms of that, in the media.

I think what happened here is, if you look at the slide, it talks of external diversity and the emergence of new players. What we discussed about was mainly that in the existing current community radio stations and community print organisations, what role the MDA should play is to ensure that these are sustainable in terms of funding, operational, and so forth, as we'll go over through the slide.

The other issue mentioned here was that the MDA is not only to focus on existing current media structures but also to assist communities to be able to get new media structures. Like in places where there are no community radio stations, the MDA, it would be its role. And not forgetting that our broadcasting here, we're not covering only broadcasting but when we talk of electronic media where we are broad, to say even multimedia. I mean, Internet and at large.

Currently you speak of audio casting. Like I've mentioned, it's in the block there, the identity of MDA, it's composed of financial structures, positions of overall society and goals of the agency. What happened here was that we couldn't dwell much more on policy issues because there was a commission where the other group was merely dealing with issues like policy and the like. However, we acknowledged that we cannot disassociate to discuss a little bit of policy, how we want the operations to go on upon MDA. But we've realised mostly that this will be determined mostly be the policies that will be set up in terms of getting the MDA process forward.

The next slide, we went directly to: How can MDA create greater diversity in broadcasting? These are issues that couldn't just come up but we debated a lot of these issues and we've noticed that time was running away because some of these issues are so broad that they need broader discussions like all of us in the house.

We said for the participation of women, we looked at issues like for example, gender, and we noticed that at existing current radio stations or either at current media structures that we have, we need to balance issues like gender.

The other issue which was covered was programming and also the issues of funding. As much as the research document was presented here by Tracey, she mentioned earlier on, examples of stations which are currently running their programming. I mean, in terms of community, which are community based, where you see CBOs and NGOs participating there and local organisations participating there.

Along that line, we noticed that this is what we call our media diversity, where the broadcasting or the coverage doesn't only take specific kind of groupings, regardless of geographically or religiously based community radio stations, but we say MDA covers all. And these are policies which will be implemented. And the operational organisation at executive level of the MDA will be looking mainly at those functions. But in most governing policies, the MDA should cover issues of programming, how should programming go about, and the gender as well as funding, to ensure that at the level of operation, those particular things are adhered to. I'm not going to go on issues like that, but this is just a summary of this first slide.

So the other issue here is: MDA to have a stakeholders forum to interact with industries. It must have a research function, it must have a partnership with USA. When this issue was raised, it was that many organisations so far, like in terms of our own radio stations, there's a lack of research and it contributes to the production or to the delivery of the station itself. The idea was that if there's a kind of research you need, that the MDA will assist, like the research you need from the MDA itself that is going to assist stations. Stations are also able to conduct their own research and in that research you'll be able to know, to determine the issue of advertising revenue that they generate, determine the issue of the programme, how is it, and the listenership and the like. It will then assist them to improve the quality of their broadcasting. So the issue of research is more important since we know that in many organisations, the research sustains the organisation.

And the stakeholders forum came up on the issue that for example, we see institutions which are statutory and non-statutory and the like, how did they exist. And there was a debate about this, whether it should be non-statutory or statutory. I would say ninety nine percent of the house, the debate was that this should be statutory, though we didn't conclude on this thing because I think even the last rapporteur from the other commission said that there was a whole debate about this from their commission and he couldn't bind the commission that it agreed that this should be a statutory or a non-statutory body.

So in this regard we had all those debates because we noticed from the report of the commission, where will it report and how accountable it is and how will the flow of funding come from the government and the like, and how the industry should contribute.

The idea of the stakeholders forum is to bring everybody who participates in the industry to be part of this forum in terms of generating ideas, in terms of advisory measures. I believe this was introduced based on, if I remember what the CEO of GCIS said, that they are coming with an interim council that is going to look at these issues to ensure that the MDA at a short-term or long-term issue, it's existing or it's lodged.

So the stakeholders forum, it's one issue that we are challenged to go over it, to ensure that the MDA probably maybe after this lobby, that we should go towards that particular forum to ensure that things are co-ordinated and that they are not losing touch. So it must have a partnership with other institutions. Of course we cannot ignore the partnership that the MDA should have with different institutions and the like. USA, which is venturing more on the Internet and the roll out of telecentres in rural areas.

And it was said now in terms of revenue, the IBA revenues in terms of licence, levies from M-Net and the commercial E-TV, also a smaller percentage should go to the MDA to sustain this. And also to get the industry contributing a small percentage of it to ensure that not only foreign donors or government grants make the MDA to exist or to sustain itself but there's more level of lower funds from different organisations.

The MDA should have a relationship, as we mentioned, for example, it says, "relationship with government, but must have independence". That is still an ongoing debate about that issue about what independence and how the relationship with government. But one thing good is that we all acknowledged the government involvement as much as we have GCIS here and I think most of us were all relying on the government to champion this particular cause.

This slide is also much more covering issues of funding. But many people felt that GCIS considered more appropriately because it includes all media. That idea came up that GCIS doesn't only cover a particular level of media, either broadcasting or print, but it covers the entire broader media. I think one of the delivery measures is to ensure that media across is diversified, that there are some implementations of some media, medium of medias in other sectors. So that's why here it's seen that the relationship with GCIS is more vital.

And people felt that no, if this comes as an independent body it should report to the GCIS and then via the - as much as the GCIS is located maybe with the Minister in the President's Office and the like, rather than, people were having reservations about the IBA and the parliament connection with DOC and the like. And there was debate about where it should be located in terms of policies and the likes. I think this house, as time goes on, in different provincial seminars, until the end of the lobby, this lobby road show will be able to have positions.

It says: "Potential for discomfort on non government sector may find government too dominant." It says: "the larger partner". What happened here, it was said that it's important to bring in the other role players of the industry in this particular field, based on the reason that at this time of the emergence of the idea, if we are not going to bring the other role players, we'll have a problem because if for example, the commercial mainstream media is not involved, it's going to be difficult for them at a later stage to be involved. Then you need to bring them on board.

One person suggested that if the agents would have five to seven members, among those members you should have different councillors or whatever board members, from different mainstream media, from the whole industry at large so that there is a full representation. Because once we have people from one-sided, then they will have problems there and you'll have also a problem of cash flow and sustainability.

It says: "Existing structures should collapse into MDA for strategic reasons." I think all the ... Fund, ... and the like, these are organisations and PDA which are still also looking at options that when the MDA is established, where do they fall. So far they have shown an interest in saying that they'll be - perhaps I will use the word 'swallowed' into the MDA and probably maybe there will be a transfer of resources. So this was a suggestion also from the commission to say that such structures, as much as it's been seen that they've been contributing towards diversity media and also funding the local existing community media and they will also be part of the coming new MDA, and thus far, it's seen that at this level, the MDA will be able to carry weight and impact on the industry.

Here, areas such as gender, rural/urban divide can be addressed through, like I mentioned, policy funding and training. What's important here, training is also an important aspect because we have seen that in the level or if you look at large at the existing community media, the issue of training has been a problematic one because training needs resources, it needs funding and it also needs some skills for people to train. And we have been having a problem, a lack of capacity to get training as much as we want. This is what MDA is also earmarked to do. Because when they are set up very well in terms of training, we are sure that in a short ten to five years, in less than a decade, the whole media industry will be capacitated with people with high skills training and a lot of experience as such. So the importance of training really needs to be looked at.

Thus far it will cause a lot of diversity because the other problem is this. The other problem we experienced is that people were, at the expense of community media, were trained and as time goes on, the mainstream media tends to take all those people on board and you find that the people remaining behind are not having the capacity that the other people have. And as time goes on, you find that the structure or organisation collapses because all the skilful people and capacity people, they are all gone. And I believe most of us in our organisation, this is what we are faced with. So there's a need for a larger broader training programme to exist in this thing.

And policy, though this was the duty mainly of the policy committee, our suggestion was that all the policies that govern the MDA should be policies that are looking at the broader operation and the broader spectrum of all the details and aspects of broadcasting, both at community media level.

The other additional source of funds, as I mentioned, the IBA levies and SABC.