The government`s chief spokesman accused foreign reporters Monday of conveying a false impression about South Africa through selective and emotional reporting and editorializing in news stories.
Louis Nel, deputy minister for information, issued a two-page, single-spaced statement at a press briefing in Pretoria outlining his complaints.
Nel said the death toll in violence is being presented in such a way as to create the impression that all blacks who died were killed by government forces and were engaged in anti-apartheid protests.
”Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
Of 31 persons killed since the state of emergency began last Thursday, he said, 21 were killed in fighting among blacks.
”The South African government has never objected to reasonable criticism,” he said. ”However, the South African government does not accept that foreign journalists have a right to lambaste the government with selective reporting through emotional terminology.”
He voiced particular objection to ”editorializing” in a Reuters news agency dispatch that referred to a ”draconian” state of emergency in ”riot- torn” South Africa.
A government decree has made the government Bureau of Information the sole source of information on the black townships. Reporters are barred from the townships.
