ABSTRACT
Abstract Political pressure on South Africa’s press self-regulatory system in 2010 has seen critics, defenders and reformers citing various experiences, such as local broadcast regulation as well as international cases, in favour of their positions. However, such ‘borrowings’ can clearly lend themselves to various forms of appropriation that are simply expedient. Underlying many of these references is a notion that there are types of ‘best practice’ that can and should be emulated by virtue of their status. This is a highly controversial notion, and yet few would go as far as to say that the uniqueness of a given situation (in this case, print regulation in South Africa) means that nothing is worth replicating from other contexts. This article unpacks these issues, and proposes three broad criteria that constitute ‘best practice’ for ‘borrowing’. These criteria are (a) analysing purpose and fitness-for-purpose within extant contexts; (b) developing general principles; and (c) being fit-for-purpose within the destination context. The article also distinguishes different dimensions of the meaning of ‘statutory’ regulation.
