Enjoyed engaging with fellow columnists and newspaper editors on the role of press in shaping public policy challenges. The organisers made one clip available. They summarised my input as follows:
SACSIS columnist, Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen, argues that progressive activists should be given a fair chance to get their views into newspapers.Hassen provides an example of how newspapers ignore civil society’s views. Civil society raised concerns about aluminium smelters and their burden on South Africa’s (SA’s) electricity supply as far back as the year 2000, but they were ignored by the media. More recently, however, when the CEO of a bank said that the way to solve SA’s electricity crisis was to close down aluminium smelters, suddenly it became an issue that the media was interested in.
