A controversial report by South Africa's Human Rights Commission accuses the mainstream media of propagating racist views which are little different from the "white supremacist" ideology of the old ultra-right.
Entitled "Interim Report of the Inquiry into Racism in the Media", it has rekindled fears that the investigation may serve as a platform for a political assault on press freedom under the guise of eradicating media racism.
Editors and journalists in the "offending" newspapers have already been invited to respond to the interim report within 30 days. If they do not, the commission will not hesitate to use its statutory powers to subpoena them to give evidence at public hearings scheduled to be held early next year, its chairman, Dr Barney Pityana, has warned.
While Dr Pityana has not specifically threatened to use the commission's power of seizure and confiscation, those powers are part of its statutory arsenal. Refusal to heed subpoenas can result in imprisonment.
The Star, the flagship in Mr Tony O'Reilly's Independent Newspapers, is one of the mainstream newspapers indicted in the interim report. It has scathingly labelled the report "psychobabble" and refused to dignify the report with editorial comment.
But the controversy over the interim report - compiled largely by Ms Claudia Braude, a BA honours graduate in comparative literature with little direct experience of how newspapers function - stems as much from its methodology as its conclusions.
Her premise is that the media was generally supportive of white rule under apartheid and she approvingly quotes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's conclusion to buttress her argument: "The press failed to cover the liberation struggle according to professional standards. Liberation movements were demonised or out of bounds".
From that assumption - which takes no account of press opposition to the old regime and the harassment and even imprisonment of journalists, some of them sympathisers with and even secret members of the banned ANC - Ms Braude undertakes "contextual analysis" of the Afrikaner and Radio Pretoria, known for right-wing sympathies.