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Zimbabwe's media landscape
Sokwanele
January 31, 2012

http://www.sokwanele.com/thisiszimbabwe/archives/7329

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Not long ago, a young friend of mine went walking around a quiet upscale neighborhood with a video camera, filming the area, capturing images of insects in the grass, a newspaper sign and the people lazing about. He was hardly engaged in anything dangerous or political. But within five minutes, the police had rounded him up and threatened to charge him with the dastardly crime of Practicing Journalism without a License. "After all," the officer in charge said, "there's nowhere in the world that you can just go out and photograph things!"

The officer's ignorance was not surprising since he had clearly never been anywhere else in the world. But, in truth, very few countries prevent ordinary citizens from wandering around filming or journalists from doing their jobs without the permission and control of the authorities. Zimbabwe is on a short distinguished list of nations that includes Yemen, Sudan, China, and North Korea.

That's not the only abnormality in Zimbabwe's media landscape. Little about it conforms to the way things are done across the globe - or to global or African standards.

In Zimbabwe, government keeps tight control over who can run a media outlet and who can report for it. A Zimbabwean might be able to move to the United States, to South Africa or to England and open a newspaper. But back home, he can't do so without a license from the Media Commission, which is appointed by the Minister of Information in consultation with the president, and he can only employ journalists they agree to license. He cannot have any shareholders who live in any other country, even if they are Zimbabwean. And his license can be taken away even more easily than it was granted. As a result, the print sector is dominated by ZimPapers, largely owned by the Mass Media Trust, which is controlled by Government.

Government exercises even greater control over the airwaves - radio and television stations - which has left the country at the mercy of ZBC's single television and four radio stations. No other radio or television station can be established without a license from the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe, the BAZ, whose members are appointed by the Minister of Information in consultation with the President. The regulations bar any station from being owned by a non-resident Zimbabwean, from employing non-Zimbabweans, receiving any funds from overseas, or using any transmitter other than that of the government-owned TransMedia.

Even with licenses and registrations, the media have a hard time doing their job. Although according to the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, Zimbabwean journalists have the right to see the sort of information held by public bodies that they need to do their work, they are crippled by a host of exceptions. They can't see Cabinet documents, draft legislation, or recommendations provided to public bodies if officials declare that their publication might affect relations between different levels of government or harm the economic interest of the public body. And any public body can keep its records secret if the people in charge deems releasing them to be "not in the public interest."

And even with all the correct information, journalists still can't really work to international standards. While the Constitution provides for freedom of speech and of the press, journalists can be charged with "criminal defamation" if they publish material deemed harmful to individuals. If convicted, they face prison, fines and suspension of their licenses. If they publish things deemed prejudicial to the state or the economy, deemed to undermine public confidence in law enforcement, to reflect negatively on Parliament, or to be insulting to or engendering feelings of hostility toward the President, they face up to 20 years in jail.

What does all of this mean in practical terms?

• Zimbabwe has very few newspapers for such a large and literate country because for many years, the Media Commission simply would not license any but the government press. For a number of years, the only independent newspapers operating were the Standard, the Independent, and the Financial Gazette. In May 2010, after the establishment of the GNU, were four new newspapers licensed, including the Daily News, which had been banned in 2003.
• Zimbabweans have had to turn to satellites for alternatives to ZBC and its radio station because BAZ refused to accept any applications for licenses. Only in May 2011, did they request applications, and out of the 14 received, they issued only two, to government-controlled ZimPapers and the other to a private company closely aligned to ZANU-PF.
• Zimbabwe has no community radio stations that reflect the voices of ordinary people. The BAZ has never accepted licenses for such stations, and the commercial licenses for which stations can compete cost more than $50,000.
• If a journalist reports that the President takes an Air Zimbabwe plane out of normal service for a trip of his own, he can be arrested and charged with criminal defamation, as three reporters for the Zimbabwe Independent were in January 2004.
• If a journalist reports that the Minister of Local Government bragged at his wealth at a meeting, he can be detained even if he has a recording of the meeting, as a reporter from the Daily News was in December 2011.
• If a newspaper runs a story warning the public about a new health insurance scheme on the brink of financial collapse, the reporter and editor can be arrested if the company's founder complains - not that the information is incorrect but that it was "stolen." This actually happened to staff members of The Standard in November 2011.
• Month after month, journalists are harassed - for reporting on the firing of a senior police official for allegedly playing MDC songs on his cell phone, or the arrest of an MDC Minister of State for insulting the president, for in a clear attempt to intimidate them from doing their job. Their offices have been searched, robbed and burned, and they have been physically attacked
  Accessing information from government is virtually impossible. The Central Statistics Office refused a reporters' request for the full breakdown of the population from 2002. When journalists request information about Cabinet meetings, they are told that disclosing the information is prejudicial to the State. And most times, such requests simply go unanswered. What are they trying to hide?
• Government exercises enormous control over what Zimbabweans know and hear since neither ZBC nor the newspapers published by Zimpapers exercises any degree of impartiality, as required by their status as "public" media. The appointment of their editors is subject to the approval of the Minister of Information and the President. Their motto seems to be: What Government, its leaders and ZANU-PF do it good; what the MDC and opposition parties do is bad.
• The result: The citizens have no way of knowing what is going on in their government.

Outside of the small sphere of countries where government keeps a tight lid on the media to keep the truth from its people, this simply isn't normal, even in Africa In the West African nation of Mail, for example, the media works with almost no restrictions. Journalists - even foreign journalists - don't need to seek licenses, and there are virtually no restrictions on launching of media outlets. So more than 300 private FM radio stations operate in the country, and about 50 newspapers and periodicals. For almost two decades, no Malian journalist has been arrested or harassed by government although media outlets have pressed for regular accountability from government. And during elections, a special commission mandated by the constitution guarantees that all political parties have equal access to government-controlled media.

Until the 1990s, things in Ghana weren't so different from Zimbabwe. Now, that has changed dramatically. If you want to open a newspaper, you simply register its title and begin publishing - and Ghana has more than 200 newspapers and journals and 150 FM radio stations airing ideas and information across the country.

In 1993, Ghana separated its state-owned media enterprises - the equivalent of ZBC, the Herald, and the Chronicle - from government control. Now those enterprises are overseen by an 18-member commission whose members are elected from different sectors of society. The commission, in turn, appoints a board of directors and chief executive of each enterprise who, in turn, select editors. The media commission "is a moral instrument," said Kabral Blay-Amihere, who chairs the commission. "We do not have the power to discipline or sanction anybody."

Why do so many nations, like Ghana and Mali, allow their media such free rein? On the one hand, they are simply following international standards as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press, the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, and the SADC Protocol on Culture, Information and Sport. In different words, they all say the same thing: A free and democratic society cannot exist without a free, pluralistic, independent and unrestricted media investigating issues of public interest, government policies and operations based on fully-disclosed government information.

More importantly, the leaders and citizens of these countries have come to understand that democracy cannot exist without unrestricted journalism and that good, free journalism means that:

• The job of journalists is to tell the truth by uncovering corruption, finding proof of lies and inconsistencies by the powerful, and challenging those in authority to serve the needs of the people. If no one poses such challenge, those in power cannot be held accountable.
• Good journalists and good media outlets, then, upset everyone at one time or another. If they only upset one political party, one tribe or one company, they are not doing their job.
• Protecting the people from the media, as governments say they are doing, really means protecting the secrets of the powerful.
• The moment citizens allow government to regulate the media, they can be sure that government will use that power to prevent citizens from learning the truth.
• Media owned and controlled by government will always serve government, not the people.
• Preventing journalists from gaining access to the information essential to an understanding of what government is doing means that government does not want to allow its citizens to know what is going on.
• The media must represent the diverse points of view of the population to ensure that the interests and perspectives of the minority are not suppressed by the majority.
• Turning journalists into criminals for reporting what they know or for doing their jobs criminalizes truth-telling.

All of this means that a free press isn't always comfortable, especially for the rich and powerful. It can cause embarrassment to members of a government, lead to the jailing of corporate directors, and upset a lot of people. But without it, citizens cannot gain the information they to know who is serving them and who is not; who is cheating them, and who is not; and who is pretending to be something they are not. Without this information, how can citizens know how to vote? What dangers really face them? Who has solutions that they might embrace? Free media serve as the public's eyes and ears into the inner workings of the government and other institutions. Without such a media, the citizenry has no way to hold those in power accountable.

So, how should the Zimbabwean government control the media? It shouldn't. It is not the media that needs to be controlled but government - to guarantee that it doesn't limit freedom of expression, impose censorship, hide information from the public, or punish journalists for telling the truth. The only media-specific laws necessary in a democracy are ones that prevent government from doing so and that protect public's right to information, to a clear view of government decision-making processes, and to diverse opinions.

What about registration of newspapers and licensing of journalists? What's the point of either other than to give government more power? Print media should require no registration or licensing. Anyone with the money and inclination to start up a newspaper or magazine should be free to do so - and suffer the financial loss if it produces out a poor product. And while the airwaves need some sort of control, regulation must be in the hands of an independent agency that allocates frequencies to broadcasters in an equitable manner and without charging exorbitant fees that limit access to the already powerful.

Journalists should not need licenses to practice their craft. If they do their jobs poorly, they should be fired by their editors or sanctioned by their peers. Certainly they should not be free to defame and spread lies about people. But neither the truth nor clearly stated opinion can ever be defamatory, and real defamation - knowingly spreading vicious lies that harm an individual - should be handled in civil court since criminalizing the work of journalists makes no sense in a free society. Public officials are not above the law or above criticism. Indeed, as public servants, they should be afforded no special protection against defamation. In fact, the burden of proof that a public servant has been defamed needs to be extreme high to ensure that their work is carefully scrutinized for the general good.

Government agencies must be required to disclose full information about their activities to the public. If a journalist - or any citizen - requests details about the number of teachers in a school, the amount of money spent on a new road, the qualifications of an appointee, the report of a commission, or an internal investigation into corruption, the law must require government to provide it. Exceptions should only be made when the potential harm of such disclosure clearly outweighs the public benefit from open access, not when the information might embarrass a public servant or agency, or because it simply isn't convenient.

Turning ZBC and Zimpapers, both controlled by government, into responsible, impartial media outlets that serve the public not the rulers or the ruling party is a major challenge. They cannot continue to function as the mouthpiece of whoever is in power; that undercuts their role, which is to protect the interests of the public against abuse by the powerful. So they need an abrupt and dramatic break with the past in order to reestablish their credibility.

If they are to remain in the hands of government, a hefty firewall must be established that will insulate media operations from political influence. But doing so has proven extremely difficult even in countries that have created independent boards representing diverse sectors of society to control their public media. Government ownership has slopped over into editorial meddling, and few have succeeded in finding any way to protect government-owned newspapers and broadcast outlets fully political interference. Some countries have opted instead for privatization, but that is a perilous course since it delivers a major chunk of the media into the hands of a single private interest.

Some suggest that Zimbabwe might first reform the Mass Media Trust to protect it from politics in some fashion and that, as a further guarantee of impartiality, editorial control over each of its newspapers be given either to journalists' unions or to journalism departments at various universities, which would be required to maintain their own ethnically and politically diverse boards. But no such reform can be made without political will, on all sides, to divorce the media from control by the powerful.

For too long, the Government of Zimbabwe has followed the tradition set by the government of Rhodesia, which treated the media as a threat to national security and journalists as potential criminals bent on destabilizing the nation.

Zimbabwean journalists are free to fly to the United States or Europe to do their work. They can report, film and write without asking for government permission. If a wealthy Zimbabwean wants to open a radio station or a newspaper in London or Sydney, he or she is free to do so. And if a Zimbabwean journalist can find a job with a media outlet in New York or Johannesburg, he can report without interference. They are not viewed as enemies attempting to undermine the State. They are part of a fabric of diverse voices that allow the citizens of open democracies to exercise choice.

Yet at home, those same journalists or media owners are restricted no matter where they turn. They need government permission to operate. They are regularly picked up by the police, held in detention for hours without charge, and often subjected to criminal proceedings for reporting the truth. With few independent media outlets licensed and so many journalists terrified into self-censorship, the Zimbabwean public is left at the mercy of government-controlled newspapers, radio and television, which report only what those in power want the people to hear.

In reaction, the independent media have compensated - perhaps overcompensated - in the opposite political direction, squeezing the citizenry between competing views of reality that leave virtually everyone befuddled as to what is really going on. Such polarization has become the new Zimbabwean norm, a norm to which generations of journalists, media managers, readers and viewers have become accustomed.

Norms, like other human habits, don't change easily. Journalists don't "unlearn" self-censorship. Politicians and bureaucrats who have long enjoyed the immunity of a cowed and biased media are unlikely to give up that luxury by freely handing over potentially embarrassing information and accepting criticism with aplomb. Political activists who have long felt free to harass and abuse journalists and plant blatantly false stories will not cease their attacks from one day to the next. And a citizenry that has never enjoyed the advantages of honest and open reporting cannot be expected to understand its advantages - and thus to tolerate its disadvantages - over night.

Indeed, reports from across the country suggest that many Zimbabweans have no understanding of the importance of an open and critical media, or that they simply disapprove of it. At constitution outreach meetings in Mashonaland West, villagers expressed support for banning all private media and giving government control over all newspapers and television stations. At a meeting in Makonde, villagers expressed support for life imprisonment, if not the death penalty, for negative reporting about Zimbabwe.

"The media needs to be respectful of people in authority," said a resident of rural Matabeleland. "If they are not, we'll fall into chaos."

A Bulawayan argued, "Journalists shouldn't be allowed to write whatever they want about people, even if it is true. It's against our culture."

Firmly establishing free media in Zimbabwe, then, isn't just a matter of rewriting laws. It demands a process of education of the people as well as of those in power. Undoing both the Rhodesian and Zimbabwean "norms" will be a long and often painful process of changing the firmly-established habits of every element of an entire nation.

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