Ministry welcomes porn channel decision

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Pretoria - The Ministry for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities has welcomed the announcement by MultiChoice that the company will not be proceeding with the idea to launch a pornographic channel on DSTV.

"The decision to abandon the idea is in line with the efforts to protect children from accessing pornographic material," said spokesperson Sibani Mngadi.

He said the decision also underlines the necessity to protect human dignity of women who are often projected in a negative and degrading manner in such media products.

The country, Mngadi said, has to work with its media sector to ensure that women are not presented as inferior beings or exploited as sexual objects and commodities.

MultiChoice's decision came at an opportune time for the South African delegation to the United Nations' Session on the Status of Women which came to an end in New York on Friday.

The delegation is led by Minister for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities, Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya.

The UN session was reviewing progress in implementation of the Beijing Declaration which, amongst other things, calls for an end to the projection of negative and degrading images of women in the media.

Attainment of gender equality in the media was identified as one of the areas where less progress has been made since adoption of the Beijing Declaration 15 years ago (1995). SA is signatory to this Declaration.