SANEF Council Encouraged by South Africa’s Attempt to Address Global Digital Market Failures

The South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) convened its November Council meeting in Johannesburg yesterday, with a central focus on assessing the Competition Commission’s final report arising from the Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry (MDPMI). The Council notes that the Inquiry marks a landmark moment in South Africa’s attempt to address global digital market failures that have profoundly affected the sustainability of journalism.

The Council welcome the Commission’s recognition that the challenge before it was not merely to compensate for harms already suffered, but to “fix the competition problem rather than simply compensate for the negative outcome.” By moving beyond the narrow pay-for-harm model, the Commission attempted to reshape underlying digital market dynamics in a way that foregrounds democratic participation, media plurality, and rights-based governance.

SANEF is encouraged that the final report delivers several important gains. These include a negotiated and enforceable funding package between the Commission and Google; binding commitments and remedies applicable to Meta, TikTok, Microsoft, X and OpenAI; newly established obligations on YouTube; and interventions that incorporate the SABC’s critical public mandate. Importantly, the report situates these remedies within an explicit democratic framing, recognising journalism as a public good essential to accountability, transparency, and the health of South Africa’s constitutional order. The report also illustrates the limits of a negotiated remedy-based approach. While the Commission has been able to extract concessions, SANEF notes that a structural redesign of the digital market would be difficult within the constraints of an inquiry operating in an environment dominated by multinational technology companies.

Council emphasised that the negotiated settlement model offers a significant practical advantage: the remedies can take effect immediately. Had the Commission opted for a purely adversarial or structural route, the country would have faced years of litigation, during which no meaningful support would flow to newsrooms, community media, or the SABC despite the sector facing severe financial pressure and widespread market failure. In this context, SANEF believes that the settlement is a pragmatic approach that secures funding, transparency obligations, AI-related protections and enforceable commitments now, rather than deferring relief until after long and costly court battles that the sector cannot afford.

SANEF notes the report’s strongest regulatory recognition to date that platform concentration in search, social media, and digital advertising is a key driver of the weakening of news publishers, exacerbated by collapsing referral traffic and the rise of AI systems that summarise news without compensation. The report affirms what the media sector has long warned that tech platforms extract enormous value from news content while returning a diminishing share, undermining the economic foundations of journalism.

The Council also acknowledged the report’s shift toward a plurality of parallel funding mechanisms rather than one unified national fund. These include the Google-funded Digital News Transformation Fund (DNTF), Google’s own multi-year funding streams for national, community and mainstream publishers, SANEF’s proposed Journalism Fund SA, which is designed to support public-interest journalism through multi-stakeholder governance as well as the statutory Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA). South Africa will therefore have multiple purpose-specific funding instruments working in a complementary landscape.

SANEF strongly supports the Commission’s emphasis on membership of the Press Council or the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) as a requirement for media houses seeking to benefit from key remedies, including Google News Showcase, monetisation tools, training programmes, and certain AI-related protections. This alignment affirms SANEF’s longstanding position that ethical journalism, credibility, and public accountability must sit at the heart of any remedy involving platform funding or AI governance. We urge Parliament to take careful note of this principle as it considers implementing the report’s recommendations.

At the same time, SANEF remains concerned that the Commission has not provided direct support to strengthen the Press Council and BCCSA. These self-regulatory bodies are foundational to the integrity of the remedies, yet their sustainability remains uncertain. If these institutions weaken, the entire architecture of the Inquiry’s outcomes may come under strain.

SANEF further supports the recommendation that the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition grant a block exemption enabling media houses to negotiate collectively. This measure acknowledges bargaining asymmetries and aligns South Africa with international models in Australia and Indonesia. While it does not correct global power imbalances, it gives local publishers essential legal cover to negotiate with dominant platforms.
Overall, SANEF believes the Commission has produced a well-argued, well-researched report that significantly shifts the policy terrain. While not resolving all structural issues, it establishes a solid foundation for the next phase of South Africa’s digital media regulation.

Journalism Qualifications
The Council meeting also deliberated the urgent need to lead a national campaign to modernise South Africa’s media and journalism qualifications, which remain largely anchored in an outdated analogue framework. Many current programmes were designed before the transformative shifts brought about by digital media, including the rise of social platforms, smartphones, streaming technologies and artificial intelligence. As a result, they place disproportionate emphasis on obsolete technical skills such as traditional broadcast engineering and linear production systems, while neglecting critical competencies required in contemporary newsrooms, such as data journalism, social video production, audience analytics, multimedia storytelling, and digital safety. This systemic misalignment is producing underprepared graduates, increasing reskilling burdens for media organisations, and ultimately weakening the talent pipeline and the overall standard of journalism in South Africa.

Finally, Council received an update on the Digital News Transformation Fund (DNTF), established to empower independent publishers through digital innovation. The Fund supports publishers with little or no online presence, assists those building basic digital products to expand their reach and capabilities, and enables digitally mature publishers to invest in modern technologies to strengthen their business models. SANEF welcomes the DNTF as a key vehicle in advancing sustainability, diversification, and innovation across the news ecosystem.

• To access the full analysis presented by the Access to Information and Media Policy committee to the Council meeting, and it is written by committee member, Michael Markovitz, for discussion in the meeting click here

Note to Editors:

The South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) is a non-profit organisation whose members are editors, senior journalists, and journalism trainers from all areas of South African media. We are committed to championing South Africa’s hard-won freedom of expression and promoting quality, ethics, and diversity in the South African media. We promote excellence in journalism by fighting for media freedom, writing policy submissions, research, and education and training programmes. SANEF is not a union.

For more information, please contact:

Makhudu Sefara – Chairperson (079) 177-2134

Tshamano Makhadi – Deputy Chairperson (082) 223-0621

Glenda Daniels – Secretary-General (083) 229-9708

Sbu Ngalwa – Treasurer General (073) 404-1415

Katy Katopodis – SANEF Wellness and Safety Chair (082) 805-7022

Judy Sandison – SANEF KZN Convenor (082) 571-3334

Jude Mathurine – SANEF Eastern Cape Convenor (083) 799-1701

Sisanda Nkoala – SANEF Western Cape Convenor (073)138-5564

Reggy Moalusi – SANEF Executive Director (071) 682-3695

Twitter: @SAEditorsForum

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.sanef.org.za