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Government
media and the England Cricket team
Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-47
Monday November 22nd - Sunday November 28th
2004
THE government
media’s reluctance to expose the authorities’ pathological hatred
of a free Press was clearly illustrated by their crude attempts
to suffocate facts surrounding the delay in the arrival of the England
Cricket team, which is currently in the country for four one-day
international cricket matches against Zimbabwe.
Instead of categorically
informing their audiences that the visiting team had deferred travelling
to Zimbabwe because government had barred 13 foreign journalists
from covering the tour, these media feigned ignorance of the reasons
for the delay.
Typically, ZTV
(24/11, 8pm) in a 20-second item carried at the end of the bulletin,
reported: "Unverified reports say the England Cricket
team that was supposed to arrive at 9 am hasn’t", adding
that the reasons for its non-appearance were "unknown".
It was only
the next morning that audiences of the government media got a glimpse
of why the team had not arrived on schedule through an AFP ‘brief’
tucked away on the back page of The Herald.
The story reported
that England had cancelled their flight to Harare "pending
further discussions with the Zimbabwean authorities over a number
of British journalists who were denied visas" to cover
the tour. This represented totally inadequate coverage of a major
hitch to a highly publicized international tour and warranted greater
prominence, not to mention a full and factual explanation.
The private
media displayed no such hypocrisy.
SW Radio Africa
(24&27/11), Studio 7 (25 &26/11), The Daily Mirror
(25/11) and the Zimbabwe Independent (26/11) all gave detailed
and factual accounts of the story.
For example,
The Daily Mirror reported that the English team had suspended
their trip to Zimbabwe after government had barred the journalists
on political grounds. The paper cited a BBC interview in which Information
Secretary George Charamba was quoted saying government had only
accredited "bona fide media organisations" and
banned those that are "political" because
this was "game of cricket, not politics".
When it emerged
that the authorities had backed down and revoked the ban on the
journalists following threats of an England withdrawal from the
tour, the government media downplayed this seemingly humiliating
about-turn and muffled the truth.
Power FM (25/11,
1pm), for example, passively allowed Information Minister Jonathan
Moyo to claim that delays in accrediting the 13 was "purely
an administrative matter" which arose because the journalists
had "supplied insufficient information"
to government.
There was no
attempt by the official media to reconcile Moyo’s claims with the
initial reasons given by Charamba. Rather, The Herald (26/11)
merely announced that government had accredited all journalists
and unrepentantly maintained that some of them were "on
a covert mission" using cricket as a cover.
An insight into
why Moyo had climbed down on the matter appeared in the Independent.
The paper revealed that ZANU PF information secretary Nathan Shamuyarira
had overruled Moyo’s decision as he "thought nothing
would be achieved by banning the journalists, except feeding negative
publicity about government".
The government
media’s efforts to suffocate the facts surrounding the cricket saga
demonstrates a total disdain for their obligation to accurately
inform the public of such important developments and clearly affirms
their status as slavish conduits of government propaganda.
Visit the MMPZ
fact sheet
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