The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has responded to criticism that its banning of reading newspaper headlines on-air is a form of censorship.

Speaking to TMG Entertainment on Thursday‚ SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago confirmed that the broadcaster had banned the reading of newspaper headlines on all programmes across its TV and radio platforms with immediate effect.

“This is a business decision that was made this week. It is not a policy but simply a decision that we have made as an institution‚” Kganyago said.

He added that the decision came from the realisation that the reading of newspaper headlines was providing free advertising for the publications that the headlines were being read from.

“The SABC makes 80% of its revenue from advertising and so by us reading newspapers’ content we are just giving them free publicity. They do not pay us for that exposure and we are not required to (provide) it‚” Kganyago said.

The move has caused a stir on social media with fans accusing the public broadcaster of censorship‚ especially in light of a recent decision by the broadcaster not to air violent service delivery protests.

Kganyago said the two were not related.

“This decision is not a form of censorship in anyway. How can it be? We are not obligated to read newspaper headlines on our show. If people want to read headlines, they can see it on billboards. We have an obligation to provide news content to our audiences but that can be done through our own internal news organisation that gathers and provides news to our platforms‚ We refuse to give people free advertising‚” he added. (TMG Digital)