South Africa needs a media appeals tribunal because reporting by the print media is too often "unfair", President Jacob Zuma told MPs yesterday.

Without acknowledging that he was talking about himself, Zuma said during his quarterly question and answer session in Parliament: "We are concerned because a lot of pain has been caused by how the media has been reporting on certain individuals in the country.

"The manner in which the media has been reporting over the years - it seemed to be overstepping the boundaries that should guide it ."

Zuma has faced a decade of intense media scrutiny linked to his trial and acquittal on a charge of rape laid by the daughter of a friend; extensive charges, eventually withdrawn on a technicality, of corruption and fraud, which exposed his poor personal financial management; his multiple marriages; the suicide of a former wife; and his many children, born in and out of wedlock.

"When the media reports about individuals, about citizens, you have huge headlines and a picture of the person. And when they discover that in fact their reporting was erroneous, and they agree to retract, they don't give the same equal weight . the response is absolutely meaningless. It's not fair . They don't project the issue at the same level," he said.

Zuma said the ANC was proposing that Parliament take charge of designing a media appeals tribunal to ensure it would be transparent and independent. He urged the nation to discuss the proposal.

IFP member Mario Ambrosini argued that some issues should not be discussed: "There are things that should not be debated. We will not be debating at all the reintroduction of slavery or at all the reintroduction of torture. By the same measure of human rights culture, we should not even begin debating at all regulating the press."

Ambrosini said: "The solution lies in the law of defamation."

Zuma sent a mixed signal on what to expect from the proposed tribunal.

He said first it would be a panel to which individuals could appeal if they were unhappy with the response of the existing Press Council, which manages the office of the press ombudsman.

Later, he said the tribunal would take up issues on behalf of poor people who could not afford legal support.

He promised that the ANC would not suppress press freedom, saying the party had fought for freedom of expression in the liberation struggle.