A proposed Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT) should not be used for pre-publication censorship, the South African Communist Party (SACP) said on Sunday.

While the SACP supported the African National Congress's (ANC's) proposal for a MAT, the body should not be appointed by Parliament, SACP secretary-general Blade Nzimande said.

"It needs to be an independent body - independent of party political, governmental, and narrow commercial media interference," he told journalists after the central committee meeting of the SACP in Johannesburg.

"While the current proposals suggest that the tribunal should be appointed by Parliament, the SACP agrees that we need to guard against the danger of political manipulation of the process," he said, adding that during Thabo Mbeki's Presidency, a sound multiparty consensus in committee on a new SABC Board was undermined by Presidential interference.

He said that for these reasons, the central committee proposed that a selection panel for the Tribunal should include a range of representative structures from the media itself, including community media.

"The key role of Parliament should be less in the appointment function, and more in the possibilities Parliament offers for creating a public space in which to have an ongoing national debate about progress in developing and democratising our media and setting standards for reporting."

He said that the SACP proposed that the tribunal should be required to table six-monthly reports to Parliament on appeals submitted to it and on the rulings that it has made.