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The New Age Voices Issue 26
Youth Agenda Trust
November 03, 2011

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State media take on Prime Minister

The State controlled media mainly the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), The Herald and The Sunday Mail have begun to make personal attacks on Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a move which many have said is a deliberate ploy to discredit the premier ahead of possible elections next year.

In the past two weeks, almost all news bulletins aired by the national broadcaster have been laced with hate stories which pour scorn on the Prime Minister and denigrating the Movement for Democratic Change while propping up Zanu PF and its leader Robert Mugabe.

The attacks intensified last week when the State media took the opportunity to misrepresent the Premier on the issue of gay rights to the extent that headlines in its entire media were ridiculing him saying he was behaving like a "European".

This week ZBC has been flighting news stories which depict the PM and the MDC as a violent person and party using archived clips from as way back as 2002. Despite the known fact that Zanu PF has been at the forefront of perpetrating violence countrywide, ZBC and The Herald twisted events that occurred in Harare this week where the police fought running battles with vendors but were misrepresented as MDC hooligans.

Youths who spoke to The New Age Voices dismissed the latest stunt by the state media as a desperate bid by an ailing regime to undermine the popularity of the Prime Minister as it tries to rescue its waning fortunes.

Political analyst and former ZINASU Spokesperson Blessing Vava said the developments were unfortunate but said the blame lay squarely on the MDC because since signing the Global Political Agreement (GPA) in 2008, the party has failed to pressure Zanu PF into implementing media reforms as guaranteed by the agreement.

"It's sad but I blame the MDC because they have been wasting their energy of issues that are not important such as the Gono and the Tomana issue but negating the contentious issue of media reforms Youth activist George Makoni slammed the recent onslaught on the PM saying they are desperate propaganda measures which will in the end fail to add votes to the ailing Zanu PF party.

"Desperate times calls for desperate measures. Zanu PF is just desperate hence all this is just politicking. I want to urge all the progressive people of Zimbabwe to pull the plug on the shameless state media buying stopping buying the newspapers. As young people we also demand that media reforms be instituted immediately.

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