Sanef concerned by increasing incidents of intimidation and harm to journalists

The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) has raised concerns over the growing trend of journalists’ being physically intimidated and harmed.

This follows reports of an Eastern Cape newspaper’s senior reporter receiving an anonymous call from a person who told him to watch his back as there were people hired to shoot him.

The caller urged him to be careful about stories he has been investigating that Sanef is led to believe, are related to the assassination of University of Fort Hare (UFH) Vice-Chancellor (VC) Sakhela Buhlungu’s close protector, Mboneni Vesele. The newspaper was forced to pull the shaken journalist out of the stories he was working on last week Thursday.
ALSO READ | Sanef demands investigation after attacks on journalists in KZN

The organisation also added that in September last year, a Herald newspaper reporter was harassed and intimidated by locals who clashed with foreigners in Plettenberg Bay, forcing the journalist to leave her home because of threats of violence by community members in KwaNokuthula Township.

It became so bad that the reporter and the publication decided that her news reports will no longer carry her name to mitigate the intimidation and make her feel more at ease in a community in which she too is a member.
READ MORE
Push to revamp Pietermaritzburg airport
Speaking on the physical intimidation and harming of journalists, Sanef labelled this as shameful.

Our democracy is enriched when journalists are allowed to report fearlessly, without intimidation. When this right is taken away from them, the victim is not simply the media, it is members of society who have a right to access information critical to the functioning of their country and democracy.