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Analysis of the Parliamentary Report on The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings (ZBH), (Formerly Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation)
By Shepherd Mutamba, Broadcaster & first ZBC Newsnet Editor-in-Chief
July 17, 2004

This paper was presented at the MISA-Zimbabwe workshop with Parliamentarians held at the Kingdom Hotel Victoria Falls July 17, 2004

General analysis of Parliamentary Report:

Introduction
I have had problems with people failing to distinguish the difference between critiquing or analysing something and attacking. In the following paper I do not seek to attack the persona of any public office bearer, the Members of Parliament gathered here today or the Cabinet ministers in their offices back in Harare. I am merely analysing their work and their honourable public offices.

The streaming of operations at ZBH, as a public broadcaster, was a noble idea in that it ushered in a completely new era of highly specialised functions to help the Holdings reach out to the nation and more fundamentally to assist the broadcaster in telling the Zimbabwean story while also entertaining, educating and informing the nation.

Before I move onto the more critical issues of my paper on the restructuring of ZBH, I must say I found it a bit puzzling that the committee interviewed key people like the Minister of Information and Publicity Jonathan Moyo without the report telling us what the minister actually said in his contribution. The same goes for other senior Government officials who were interviewed. I become worried when such issues of public interest appear shadowy.

The report is supposed to be a public document, as such, it would have been ideal to know exactly what some of the key public office bearers said. We begin to have all sorts of ideas the moment such reports appear unclear about who said what and why. The credibility of the report is very questionable in that the MPs interviewed incumbent senior staff at ZBH without bothering to get views from other senior employees who are no longer with ZBH. Why I am saying this is because I have doubts that the incumbents would be generous with credible information knowing too well on which side their bread is buttered.

Technical Constraints
A news item, educational programme or musical is of no consequence if, in the case of news, an event is covered and packaged but does not reach the intended consumer for lack of adequate transmission resources. The committee's report is thus highly accurate and responsible in bemoaning and highlighting the limited accessibility of ZBH radio and television products and recommending that there be improvements in transmission if the Holdings is going to be truly Zimbabwean in its outreach processes. According to the report only 40 percent of the country receives radio and television signals. The committee thus well covered the technical shortfalls that hamper ZBH from operating more like a national broadcaster given its dislocated geographical coverage.

Editorial independence
It was the committee's considered view that if ZBH was to execute its public mandate effectively the board and editorial team should be independent.

Now it is my considered view that the committee's report on this issue is too simplistic in that it does not put the issue of editorial freedom into its proper context. The report should have defined editorial freedom in its totality by adequately addressing questions such as: freedom...what freedom; freedom from who; freedom from what and why freedom.

ZBH, just like its predecessor the ZBC, is wholly Government owned and its affairs are run by a board appointed by the Minister of Information and Publicity in the Office of the President and Cabinet.

Speaking as a broadcaster and very first Editor-in-Chief of ZBC, at the launch of the first restructuring exercise in 2001,1 would testify that Government interference and control, particularly that of the Department of Information, in the day-to-day running of Newsnet, is the major problem.

The board, at least that I worked with, yes, interfered directly in editorial and managerial matters. Here I mean, issues like who should anchor news programmes, or who should be taken off air, purely professional issues that were none of the board's business.

Is the issue of interference not self-evident when Dr Gono conceded, in the parliamentary committee report, that the issue of editorial independence was a tricky one. What is tricky about freedom? Its either you are free or you are not free. That interference, ladies and gentlemen, affects the processes that enable the public broadcaster to fulfil its public mandate.

There were times when the Department of Information, during my editorship, interfered directly in editorial and managerial issues, by suggesting what angles certain hot news stories should take by way of giving the stories a particular spin designed for obvious reasons.

I am saying this to enlighten you on Government interference and its consequences on the free flow of information.

When I resigned from the post of Editor-in-Chief, after serving for a "record" seven months, it was because I could not stand the non-professional pressure to blatantly twist facts or manufacture outright falsehoods and dish the fiction to the world in the name of news.

As Editor-in-Chief I was accountable for all the radio and television news including the internet edition and current affairs programmes. Such environment, where you are also told who to fire or punish, how to fire and how to punish, naturally took a toll on my conscience. Refusing to be turned into a professional puppet I resigned in the Pockets Hill board room where heads of units where meeting to decide on the fate of retrenchment candidates, an exercise that alone was politically and not professionally directed.

The major problem at ZBH in head-hunting and appointing senior management, without going through a rigorous public selection exercise, by way of advertising posts and calling for selection interviews, is that the head-hunted appointees feel they owe their careers and livelihood to the powers-that-be and therefore feel obliged to return "favours" by towing the line without question.

I have given a personal account of my experiences, in analysing the contentious issues of editorial freedom and managerial autonomy at ZBH, merely as a point of reference.

Once the mission and values of an organisation, such as ZBH are spelt out, senior managers should be allowed to go about their work without interference from Government offices.

Political parties were and are still not afforded equal opportunity even to explain their manifestos in the run up to elections except for those that ZBC, and now ZBH, view as "friendly" opposition. It is true, as the report noted, that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) insisted on live debates on radio or television. I cannot blame MDC for making that demand.

There was never any guarantee that pre-recorded MDC programmes would not be tempered with by way of parts of the footage being deliberately edited out of context to convey completely distorted viewpoints.

Restructuring at ZBH
In restructuring Government run concerns such as ZBH it is prudent to distinguish issues of a purely business nature from those of partisan interest.

My understanding is that when you commercialise you want to make money while a partisan service is not necessarily inspired by money, or market forces, but seeks to capacitate the recipient one way or the other. Some describe a partisan service more crudely, or is it more accurately, as a form of propaganda.

In commercialising, one is driven by market dictates, in other words, one responds to the needs and expectations of the targeted consumer. ZBH, in terms of news and programming is in a big dilemma as far as commercialisation is concerned. The same goes for other Government controlled news parastatals.

While maintaining one's national outlook and while still guided by Zimbabwean Pan African ideals and values ZBH can still produce news and programmes that are marketable-news or programmes without bias for or against other citizens but content that it balanced and accurate...content that is in the best interest of the nation. Such content can and will sell globally if it is guided by the fundamental principles of journalism and not by a cabinet minister who sleeps in his office from January to December trying to reinvent the wheel of journalism. It just does not work and will never work.

"Scientists" at ZBH have reinvented the wheel. The definition of news has been technically restructured to suit the times we are living in... something that reminds the few people who still listen to radio and watch television of how Goebbels tried in futility to use the power of information during Hitler's era.

What passes as news today is mere publicity information coming from the powerful men and women, even the youths, in the ruling class. Academic, intellectual, political, and even socially opposing views are not regarded as news and such voices are silenced by way of news blackout. A fundamental human right to express oneself freely is not being upheld.

On the political scene what is regarded as news is what is in the best interest of Zanu-PF. What is regarded as news is ridicule of the more serious opposition parties that are touted as fronts for imperialists and should therefore be portrayed in bad light.

Even in business, academic or intellectual spheres opposing views, that are very much in the best interest of Zimbabwe, cannot be expressed freely on the airwaves. So whose interest is the public broadcaster serving?

As a result such approach to news and programming will not see ZBH progressing and competing or complementing other national broadcasters in the region.

Restructuring at ZBH should move from just being a technical or physical restructuring of posts, personnel or business units. Restructuring must be wholesome to include the restructuring of content itself and packaging.

What we have at ZBH today, in the name of restructuring, are the same old and tired products and packaging only whose names have been changed. These are not the expectations of the licence paying public.

ZBH today behaves as if it was bankrolled by Zanu-PF and obliged to serve only the ruling class and the Government of the day.

A typical public broadcaster serves as a national platform to engage in national debate without bias or favour. Anything else will see the continued consumer resistance of ZBH products.

As long as Government Editors, boards of directors and executive chairpersons at ZBH are appointed into these influential positions by the minister of information, the same minister who is appointed by the head of Government, the head of Government who is also the head of the ruling party, the problem will not go away.

As public institutions I would see no harm in the appointments being sanctioned by a parliamentary portfolio committee. The appointees would also be accountable to that committee.

Having done that it would then be debatable whether the post of Information and Publicity Minister in the Office of the President and Cabinet, would be necessary. It is only an idea that the honourable minister would then be humbly retired as unnecessary baggage.

Copyright: Shepherd Mutamba (17 July 2004) The reproduction of this document, wholly or in part, neither in any form, is prohibited unless with the written consent of the author.

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