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This article participates on the following special index pages:
2002 Presidential & Harare Municipal elections - Index of articles
Deteriorating
journalistic standards
Media Update
# 2002/06 - extract
Media Monitoring
Project Zimbabwe
February 15, 2002
The Media
Monitoring Project notes with concern the recent deterioration in
the standard of journalism being practised in the country. Public
media organizations are clearly the worst offenders in the manufacture
of unsubstantiated stories, but recent developments suggest the
contagion may have started to affect the privately owned Press too.
The widespread
use of unidentified "sources" to provide credibility for unsubstantiated,
inaccurate and often inflammatory stories about individuals and
organizations, even in circumstances where such anonymity is unwarranted,
amounts to a clear abuse of practice. MMPZ fears this is giving
rise to the blatant fabrication of stories, especially in the publicly
owned media, that places their audiences in the unenviable position
of trying to separate fact from fiction.
Examples of
these stories abound in the public media and include the ongoing
"MDC anthrax terror" stories, MDC "killer houses" and more recently
(in the week under review) the claim that the "MDC plans war" after
the election. In none of these stories has there ever been any substantiation
of the central "facts" upon which these stories are based, and in
the anthrax stories anthrax has never been identified as ever being
present. And despite the fact that the presence of anthrax was ruled
out in the first story about the contamination at Causeway Post
Office, the public media (Zimpapers and ZBC) continue to publish
and broadcast stories referring to "anthrax attacks" and using this
rubbish to link the MDC to the Rhodesians without providing a shred
of evidence to support these serious claims.
The same goes
for the stories about the human rights organization, Amani Trust
providing safe houses for "killers and terrorists". No evidence
has ever been provided to substantiate such atrocious claims and
the media have not reported a single arrest of the residents of
these refuges who have fled the real intimidation that is presently
plaguing Zimbabwe. This story would surely warrant prosecution if
it contained a grain of truth.
But nothing
of the kind has happened and MMPZ is therefore obliged to come to
the conclusion that these stories and many like them, are clearly
grossly cynical distortions of the truth, created in an effort to
publicly discredit the opposition and front-line organizations involved
in efforts to rehabilitate traumatized members of Zimbabwean society.
While the state
media may gloat over an allegedly exaggerated account of the detention
of a single journalist from the privately owned Press, the magnitude
of their own fabricated stories and persistently systematic manipulation
of the news is an intolerable abuse of the media which poses a far
greater threat to the nation's access to information than the relatively
trivial offences committed by the privately owned Press.
While it is
expected that the public media will remain slaves to government
propaganda, at least for the duration of the presidential election
campaign, MMPZ calls on all media organizations to desist from the
practise of publishing or broadcasting unsubstantiated allegations
and to restore to their newsrooms the internationally accepted standards
of ethical journalistic practice.
The MEDIA UPDATE
is produced and circulated by the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe,
15 Duthie Avenue, Alexandra Park, Harare, Tel/fax: 263 4 703702,
E-mail: monitors@mweb.co.zw
or advocacy@media-monitors.icon.co.zw
Send all queries and comments to the Project Coordinator. Also,
please feel free to circulate this report. Previous copies of MMPZ
reports can be accessed at http://www.icon.co.zw/mmpz
Visit the MMPZ fact
sheet
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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