Newspaper proprietors and editors of all the main South African newspapers, both English and Afrikaans, unanimously opposed the apartheid government's planned legislation to establish a statutory media council. The proposed Newspaper Press Bill, introduced under Prime Minister BJ Vorster, sought to create a press council that would operate under state authority and administer a strict code of conduct, functioning in much the same way as a court of law. For the press, this represented an unacceptable extension of government control over the media.
The opposition was remarkable for its unity. English and Afrikaans newspapers, which frequently found themselves on opposing sides of the political and cultural divisions of the time, closed ranks against the proposed legislation. The Newspaper Press Union (NPU) and the major newspaper proprietors jointly engaged Vorster in talks, meeting over three days to argue their case against the bill.
The apartheid government had long viewed an independent press as a threat to its authority. By the mid-1970s, in the aftermath of the Soweto Uprising of June 1976, press restrictions had intensified significantly. Vorster had already amended the Riotous Assemblies Act to target the media, and the proposed Newspaper Press Bill represented the government's most direct attempt yet to bring the press under statutory control. The united stand by proprietors and editors succeeded. Vorster withdrew the bill. In its place, a new self-regulatory South African Media Council was eventually established in 1981, the result of negotiations between the state, the NPU, the Conference of Editors, and the South African Society of Journalists with journalists and members of the public serving on its panels. It represented a hard-won compromise that kept formal state control of the press at bay.
The events of 10 June 1977 stand as one of the few instances during the apartheid era in which the mainstream press, across language and political lines, successfully resisted government attempts to curtail press freedom.
