Funferal

Government fear of community radio

One of the fears governments often express when examining the notion of community radio is that such stations might be divisive, fuelling factionalism as against a sense of common national spirit. One South African regulator, Lumko Mtinde, of the Media Diversity and Development Agency, addressed this point in a talk at a conference in Botswana recently, where he:

noted that the government’s fears were allayed through the establishment of a non-politically controlled regulator, which through its legislative and regulatory framework was able to guard against such misfortunes happening.

The discussion happened in the context of an examination of proposals to introduce public service broadcasting in Botswana, and there’s some rather interesting to-and-fro for those interested.