It was a real feel good item showing mostly white employees all clad in gaily coloured overalls as busy as bees sprucing up the school much to the delight of the still clearly disadvantaged black schoolkids.
There was nothing visible on their overalls to give me a clue and the SABC presenter started off the item by referring to a "National Hardware Chain."
My first reaction was that the SABC were being childish, churlish and dog-in-the-manger by not naming the firm.
But, on the other hand I can understand the notion of not giving away free advertising on the national news. Not only would it mean loss of ad revenue but could be a horrible precedent in terms of all sorts of companies wanting to get a mention.
Which incidentally, a lot of them do. Which suggests that there doesn't seem to be any sort of firm policy at SABC news but rather depends on the whim of the news editor of the day.
Now the point is quite simply this. Was the SABC being childish or circumspect in not identifying the hardware company? Could one not argue that like me, millions of viewers were very interested in which company was doing all that renovating?
How many more schools would benefit from this largesse if the donors could rely on getting a mention on national news? Of course they should be doing it for publicity but, what the heck, if a few mentions can get a dozen more schools renovated, I say go for it.
If the SABC considered this sort of thing newsworthy enough to make its main bulletin of the day then surely it is obliged to present all the facts which in this case, I reckon, include the name of that company?
Is public interest not more important than advertising revenue considerations?
Looking at it from the viewer's perception, and maybe this is something SABC has to take into account, it does look very dog-in-the-manger when names are not named. Particularly in this day and age of product placement where soap operas and game shows blatantly feature products, not to mention sports broadcasts trotting out the names of sponsors at the drop of a hat.
Independent radio stations and a lot of newspapers have ditched this habit of not giving away free publicity, isn't it time SABC did the same for its own good?
