On Friday, 24 June 2016 early morning Sedibeng District Municipality hosted Local Media at Bon Hotel, Vereeniging to continue building strong good relations with the political office (Mayor`s Office). Opening words from Mr. Banzi Majola Director in the office of the Executive Mayor were: that media is important and is needed to connect and report to our communities. Media have a responsibility to report the correct and true stories, not stories that are not well researched.

In the main the key message was that media houses are welcomed to communicate; call or engage the office of the executive mayor at any given point, whether to clarify the facts or to get true stories regarding service delivery issues. Media houses commended the office for the good initiatives as the also wandered out of frustration regarding non- rapid response when crisis occur, media house request was that they would like to have one contact person for communication with them for any news and not to do like other municipalities where one offices send one message with different people “which is confusing”.

One big positive take was that during the engagement media houses agreed that they need to meet on their own without the presence of government or officials.  As a result they will establish their own local media forum to help themselves address issues like: competing for space in government for business; issues of LSM for their own distribution and research purposes and common grounds on delivering good quality news to Sedibeng communities.