The South African Broadcasting Corporation, like South Africa itself, is a symbol of contradictions. While there are bad people who work for it, there are also many good ones.
The idea of the right to know as the ‘lifeblood of democracy’ is a surprisingly modern development. And in an age when transparency is prized, privacy and secrecy can still be justified in many cases.
In the UK, thanks to the freedom of information (FoI) laws, the right to know has become routine. Ten years old this month, freedom of information laws have enabled us to inspect a public document, obtain…
We might forgive politicians for putting the “national” interest before the “public” interest. But when the news media makes the same mistake, it is time to be worried. The Guardian and the ABC rightly…