Country reports
Among the present was German MP for the City of Hamburg, Jürgen Klimke, SABC’s Head of international Relations Phil Molefe and his counterpart, Adelheid Feilcke-Tiemann from DW.
Various topics were discussed including a presentation by Media Tenor on Elections in emerging countries : tasks and problems for the public broadcaster. This gave an insight on the reporting statistics of broadcasters in South Africa on how they cover the pre-election period.
The issue on the content of elections between independent reporting and the political influence on public broadcasters was debated at length. The representative of Media Regulations in Germany, Mr Herman-Josef Arenz, gave a detailed outline of the regulations of public broadcasters in Germany and Fakir Hassen spoke about the challenges SABC faces with keeping up with the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA).
The participants were given a round tour of the SABC while Jürgen Klimke MP and Deutsche Welle conducted interviews on televison and radio. The parties present all agreed that further cooperation was needed in the future to look at issues like the 2010 World Cup.