Several complaints as to accuracy, balance and opportunity to respond from Company which managed the Repatriation Centre for Illegal Aliens, Lindela. BCCSA Tribunal holding that Carte Blanche should have afforded a representative from Lindela an opportunity to respond to accusations of unhygienic circumstances as well as the comment that the facilities reminded one of a concentration camp. Carte Blanche being reprimanded for this error by the BCCSA.
BCCSA also holding that impression created in the programme that politicians had an interest in the company awarded the tender in 1996 to manage the facility was unfounded. Since the producer was brought under this impression by an error in a fax from the spokesperson for Home Affairs, and the Financial Director of Dyambu Trust (incorrectly, but bona fide) named 11 persons, most of whom had political positions, as “trustees” in a letter found in the Master’s File, and the producer had found a suspicion raising change of date in documentation (later on explained by auditors as having been made by them as a mere clerical correction), it was held that the producer had erred but had not been negligent.
BCCSA also holding that the error should nevertheless be disclosed in a statement on air so as to clear the names of the politicians and the Complainants. BCCSA holding that the programme distinguished satisfactorily between Home Affairs’ activities at Lindela and that of the Complainants.
BCCSA holding that where special expertise is required in regard to e.g. law, that producers should obtain such advice before drawing wrong inferences from what is readily explainable in law or another field of expertise. In the present matter what was stated to be “circles within circles” in a negative manner, could easily have been explained by a corporate lawyer as being in accord with ordinary corporate law.