The Protection of Information Bill would allow government to classify government and state-owned enterprise contracts as secret and jail journalists who report on them
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The South African National Editors Forum has launched a campaign against a proposed bill which it claims would "curtail media freedoms".
A declaration by the forum was published in yesterday's Sunday papers, stating that the restrictions put forward would threaten the free expression "lifeblood" of South Africa, according to the Associated Press .
The industry group has also produced a statement signed by 36 editors calling for the proposals to be dropped.
As Journalism.co.uk reported last month , the Protection of Information Bill would allow the government to classify documents such as government contracts or those produced by state-owned enterprises as secret. Any journalist who published such documents could then face a lengthy jail sentence.
As part of a continuing campaign against the introduction of the bill as law, one newspaper even reportedly started running notices next to its stories telling readers "you would not be reading this story" if the law was passed.
Concerns over government control of the media were heightened last week after the arrest of South African journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika, following his work investigating alleged corruption by officials.
