{"id":18878,"date":"2026-06-03T17:25:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/?p=18878"},"modified":"2026-06-03T17:25:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:25:26","slug":"press-council-rules-in-favour-of-sabc-complaint-against-the-sunday-times-and-timeslive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/press-council-rules-in-favour-of-sabc-complaint-against-the-sunday-times-and-timeslive\/","title":{"rendered":"Press Council rules in favour of SABC complaint against the Sunday Times and Timeslive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Johannesburg \u2013 Wednesday, 03 June 2026 &#8211; <\/strong>The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) welcomes the ruling of the Press Council of South Africa in relation to its complaint by the SABC against The Sunday Times and TimesLive.<\/p>\n<p>The complaint related to articles and associated promotional material which reported that the SABC had decided not to renew the talk show Face the Nation as a result of pressure from the ANC and government officials.<\/p>\n<p>Following its consideration of the matter, the Press Council found that The Sunday Times and TimesLive breached key provisions of the Press Code. In summary, the Press Ombud found that the publications breached:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Clause 1.9, which requires the media to supplement reporting when important new information becomes available; and<\/li>\n<li>Clause 10.1, which requires headlines to provide a reasonable reflection of the contents of an article and not mislead the public.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the ruling, the Ombud found that the publications&#8217; headlines presented allegations as facts, including the assertion that the &#8220;ANC muscles SABC&#8221; into making an editorial decision. The Ombud further found that the publications failed to report material information subsequently provided by the SABC regarding the programme&#8217;s performance and audience figures.<\/p>\n<p>As part of the sanction imposed, The Sunday Times and TimesLive have been directed to apologise unconditionally, retract the offending statements, publish the figures provided by the SABC explaining its decision not to renew the programme, and further explain the basis for the claim that the programme drew &#8220;millions of viewers&#8221;. An additional requirement is that the apology appears on the front page of the Sunday Times and across all platforms where the articles were published.<\/p>\n<p>The SABC welcomes this outcome as it reinforces the importance of accuracy, fairness and accountability in journalism. As South Africa&#8217;s public broadcaster, the SABC remains committed to editorial independence, transparency and serving the public interest with integrity.<\/p>\n<p>Rulings by the Press Council of South African can be found on the following website once published: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.presscouncil.org.za\">www.presscouncil.org.za<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>ENDS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Issued By:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Group Communications<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Media Enquiries:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mmoni Ngubane (Head of Communications)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><u><a href=\"mailto:NgubaneMV@sabc.co.za\">NgubaneMV@sabc.co.za<\/a><\/u><\/strong><strong>\u00a0T. 011 714 3057| C. 073 688 1590<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Johannesburg \u2013 Wednesday, 03 June 2026 &#8211; The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) welcomes the ruling of the Press Council of South Africa in relation to its complaint by the SABC against The Sunday Times and TimesLive. The complaint related to articles and associated promotional material which reported that the SABC had decided not to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":8918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18878"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18879,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18878\/revisions\/18879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabc.co.za\/sabc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}