Printer-friendly versionSend by emailPDF version
Media Update # 2001/20 Monday 14 May to Sunday 20 May 2001

Masvingo’s Mayoral elections again exposed the state media’s bias in favour of the ruling party. In previous weeks these media had given ample platform to the ruling party to campaign. In the week even after the defeat of the ruling party, the state-media solicited opinions from an array of Zanu PF sources. On the day the results were announced ZBCTV gave little airtime to the victor. On the other hand, The Daily News’ had a subjective interpretation of the results, both in its headline and in the text.

Government’s U-turn in dealing with company invasions
exposed the fickleness of the state media which hitherto
had glorified the labour arbitrations and ignored the
abductions, threats and extortion in the arbitrations. Of concern, has been the ongoing battle between the
various media outlets, mainly the private press and state
media. Both sides have sought to prove the other side
wrong by denying reports in other media outlets at the
expense of providing fair and accurate information to the
public. Obviously, in the final analysis, the reader is the
victim, as s/he remains unsure of which report to believe.

Ø The week saw a new live current affairs programme, “Talk
To The Nation”, on ZBC-TV which is sponsored by
National Development Association (NDA). There were
about 12 callers, representing views that evenly reflected
those critical and in favour of government policies.
However, the programme requires the services of an
independent and qualified moderator to give it greater
credibility.

MASVINGO MAYORAL ELECTIONS

Expectations were high that after a campaign blitz on behalf of the
ruling party, the state-owned media would at least give airtime to
the winning candidate after the elections. MMPZ statistics however
show that on television, for example, of the 20 minutes spent on
the elections in the week, Zanu PF was accorded 16 minutes
(80%) while both the Registrar’s office and the MDC 90 seconds
each (7.5%) and 60 seconds was the reporter’s opinion. On radio
2/4; 55% of the voices quoted were Zanu PF, 18% MDC. Radio 3
relegated MDC’s victory to the third item (14/5 8pm). The station
carried two MDC voices against six of Zanu PF.
Similarly, the Herald solicited three Zanu PF voices versus three
from MDC (sandwiching the MDC victory between extensive stories
of Zanu PF victories elsewhere), while the Chronicle gave two
voices each to the parties. However the bias was evident in the
Herald’s editorial which read thus: “in this weekend’s election
Zanu-PF pushed its share of the vote to 29.3 percent while the
MDC share dropped to 62.9 percent…that substantial increase
in the Zanu-PF share in just under a year shows that the ruling
party is probably on the right track in its efforts to rebuild its
urban support. The editorial went further to claim that because of
this percentage rise ZANU-PF was going to get a “comfortable”
majority in the Presidential elections.

The private press however, viewed the victory as people’s brave
stand against state violence and intimidation. The Daily News 16/5,
The Financial Gazette 17/5 and The Zimbabwe Independent 18/5
ran editorials reinforcing the futility of state violence to influence
votes in urban areas.
The Daily News quoted four MDC voices against one of Zanu PF.
It’s initial article on the MDC victory was opinionated and subjective
in tone as reflected in the headline “Masvingo says no to
violence” and in the sentence “retired engineer Alois Chaimiti
became the first MDC executive mayor when he embarrassed
Zanu PF’s Jacob Chademana”.

The Independent 19/5 quoted the ordinary voices, while The
Financial Gazette 18/5 quoted two Zanu PF voices (Eddison
Zvobgo and Mavhaire, who cannot be said to represent Zanu PF’s
mainstream opinion but are in fact considered a rebel faction in the
party). The two blamed the party’s loss on violence, economic
crisis, unnamed opportunists and the party’s restructuring
exercise.
Both the private and state owned press also concentrated on the
political showdown surrounding the polls without trying to compare
the candidates on the strength of their mayoral manifestos or
programmes they had to offer once in office.
ZBC audiences were swamped with Zanu PF’s differing reasons for
the loss. These included Samuel Mbengegwi (ZBC; 14/5 8pm &
17/5) who attributed the loss to violence and intimidation,
inefficiency of the registrar general’s office. The views of other Zanu
PF officials were from secretary for administration Emmerson
Mnangagwa (three minutes thirty seconds-15/5), John Nkomo (16/5
8 pm) who blamed it on factionalism and Jonathan Moyo (ZBCTV,
20/5; 8pm).

On the other hand, MDC’s winning candidate was given a sound
bite once (1 minute on ZBCTV - on the 15th; 8pm), a day after the
results were announced. On Radio, MDC’s spokesman,
Learnmore Jongwe, was quoted commenting about the victory on
the 16th, two days after the announcement of the results.

Notably, ZBCTV also appeared to attempt to counter-balance the
MDC victory with stories highlighting internal ZANU PF
developments, which amounted to little more than public relations
items on ZBC TV. For instance on the 14th Nhau/Indaba carried
news of the MDC victory in Masvingo after an item on Philip
Chiyangwa’s victory in the Zanu PF provincial elections in
Mashonaland West. This item received two minutes and thirty
seconds during the main news bulletin (8pm) while the lead story
received one minute and forty-five seconds of white copy.

Government’s U-turn on firm invasions

For the first time in the state-owned media, in a demonstration of
these state institutions political patronage, acknowledged that
there was thuggery and evidence of rampant extortion,
abductions and violence (The Herald 17/5) in the labour
arbitrations. It attributed these to “rogue” war veterans and MDC
impostors. Previous weeks reports had glorified the war veterans as
efficient arbitrators.
Similarly the ZBC in an about turn was quick to condemn the
activities and uncritically reported Nkomo’s assertion that those
who were involved in these invasions and extorting money were
rogues/criminals (16/5). ZBC failed to report that war veterans had
been arrested and when it did the following day on 17/5 the report
was buried in the business section of the television bulletin. It was
left to a caller in a new current affairs prgramme to question and
attempt to reconcile the fact that one of the arrested people was
Mike Moyo an executive member of the war veterans and Chris
Pasimarire a war veterans executive member in Zanu PF’s Harare
province.
Although radio broke the story in time, 17/5 1pm, on television the
story broke on 18/5 Nhau/Indaba in the bulletins monitored.
The private press was dismissive of government’s efforts,
interpreting the about turn as being a result of a strategy that had
gone wrong and brought more losses than gains.

All state media (20/5) reported the appointment of four labour
tribunal judges. No attempt was made to reconcile this with
previous reports which had blamed the inefficiency in the resolution
of labour disputes on the ZCTU. Apparently, the blame could
squarely be levelled on the government because of its failure to
appoint enough judges.

Mazowe Citrus and Care International

The war between the private media and the state-media continued
this week. This time the state media (ZBC 17/5 and The Herald
18/5) rubbished a Daily News report (17/5) which had alleged that
Mazowe Citrus had been forced to close down by war veterans. In
another report, The Herald (16/5) quoted an unnamed visiting
Canadian envoy who allegedly described the Daily News (7/5) and
The Standard (13/5) reports about the assault of Care director and
Canadian diplomat at the hands of war veterans as grossly
exaggerated “press nonsense”.
The Zimbabwe Independent and the Daily News followed up the
denial alleging that the Herald had manufactured a story in order to
discredit The Daily News and that the “O”Brien had never given an
interview with the Herald. The Herald followed up with a story
standing by its story and saying had “impeccable sources”.
A similar incident occurred with the Mazowe Citrus Estate report,
where The Herald and the ZBC in indirect speech, quoted the
Estate’s chief executive who said that operations and stopped but
only for the morning. The Daily News (18/5) on the other hand
followed this up quoting unnamed workers who expressed shock at
their chief executives denial.
These reports highlight the struggle for credibility between media
outlets, and certainly the reader is the victim. The question of truth
invariably arises.

DAILY NEWS APOLOGY

Another contestation between the Daily News and the state-owned
press came to an end in the week. Against conventional
journalistic ethics and conduct, The Daily News, which had
previously alleged that a US lawsuit against the President had
resulted in a default judgement of $20billion, published a retraction
in its editorial. The statement read:
“…we stated that a default judgment had been passed
against Mugabe, where the court had only noted Mugabe’s
default. This was an error on our part and we wish to
publicly apologise to Mugabe for the embarrassment and
inconvenience it may have caused him…”

PROPAGANDA

The Herald (14/5) carried an article alleging British undercover
operations in Zimbabwe. The story quoted unnamed intelligence,
diplomatic and military analysts, consequently depriving the article
of credibility. In a separate article of the same issue Minister of
Information and Publicity Professor Jonathan Moyo reiterated the
existence of unnamed espionage missions against Zimbabwe.
Without proper sourcing and verification the report read as mere
government propaganda.
The former editor of The Herald Bornwell Chakaodza, confirmed the
existence of such propaganda. The Standard (20/5) reported that
the former editor revealed that he was once forced, against his
better judgment, by a government minister to publish a totally
false story alleging an MDC plot to sabotage the country. MMPZ is
greatly concerned by such lack of professional ethics and the use
of the public press as a medium for state propaganda.

ENDS

The MEDIA UPDATE is produced and distributed by the Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, 221 Fife Avenue, Harare, Tel/fax: 263
4 734207, 733486, E-mail: [email protected], Web:
http://www.icon.co.zw/mmpz
Feel free to respond to MMPZ. We may not be able to respond to
everything but we will look at each message. Also, please, feel free
to circulate this message.