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Media
coverage of political parties
Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2005-1
Monday January 3rd – Sunday January 9th 2005
IN attempts
to appear balanced in their coverage of all political parties ahead
of the March elections, as stipulated by the SADC guidelines on
elections, ZTV (3/1, 8pm) and Radio Zimbabwe (3/1, 8pm & 4/1,
6am) this week gave the opposition MDC and ZANU (Ndonga) very rare
opportunities to talk on their preparations for the forthcoming
poll.
However, ZBH’s
pretence was fully exposed by the tone of their story, which was
biased against the MDC.
Although they
quoted MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube explaining that the
party had yet to decide on its participation in the March elections
because government had not fully conformed to the SADC guidelines
on the conduct of democratic elections, they drowned his concerns
in vitriolic comments about the party. For example, the ZTV reporter
claimed that "political analysts" had said
the delay by the "British sponsored MDC"
to announce its position showed that the party was "confused"
and "waiting for its Western masters to tell them what
to do as they are Western driven".
None of the
analysts were named or given sound bites. But
such a gratuitously negative portrayal of the MDC is not surprising,
simply reinforcing the government broadcaster’s well-established
negative editorial slant against the party. In fact, so reluctant
is the broadcaster to give the opposition even neutral publicity
that it recently refused to air an MDC advertisement on the grounds
that the party had not confirmed its participation in the March
election (Zimbabwe Independent, 23/12). The paper quoted
Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings (ZBH) boss Rino Zhuwarara using the
repressive Broadcasting Services Act to defend the broadcaster’s
stance, saying the Act states that only contesting parties would
be given airtime.
However, he
did not state whether ZBH had any clear in-house guidelines on covering
political parties’ activities and airing their advertisements to
ensure they all get equitable airtime. Without these, any pretence
of giving fair coverage to political parties would be futile.
Meanwhile, the
Secretary in the Ministry of Information, George Charamba, vindicated
independent observers’ concerns over the deteriorating journalistic
standards at government-controlled media institutions. Charamba was
quoted in The Sunday Mail (2/1) criticizing both The Herald
and Chronicle (1/1) for going "overboard"
in their reports of his ministry’s denial of The Financial
Gazette story (30/12) claiming that Information Minister Jonathan
Moyo had resigned. He accused the papers of being "partisan",
relying on unnamed sources and "editorializing"
his ministry’s statement, which he noted was "quite unprofessional".
Interestingly,
the government appointed Media and Information Commission (MIC)
has remained silent on the matter and indeed over other previous
complaints against government media’s unethical conduct.
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