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Conspiracies
Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2005-05
Monday January 31^st – Sunday February 6^th 2005

CONSPIRACY theories characterized the government media’s coverage of the second deportation of a COSATU delegation and in the official response to scientific predictions of worsening food shortages by the internationally respected food monitoring body, FEWSNET.

None of the conspiracies were substantiated.

Despite this however, the government Press devoted 20 stories to the conspiracy agenda, 18 of which were on COSATU and two on FEWSNET.

So bigoted were The Herald and Chronicle (31/2) reports on the FEWSNET forecasts that they did not report them as breaking news but only in the context of government’s dismissal of the findings as part of the political machinations by the US and its allies to destabilise Zimbabwe ahead of the elections.

The Herald (1/2) editorial even contemptuously dismissed these revelations as "wild speculation" that government needed to "dispel".

Similarly, seven of the 18 stories the official newspapers published on the aborted COSATU trip were editorial comments and opinion pieces portraying, without foundation, the SA labour body as Western-sponsored entity carrying out its masters’ agenda of effecting regime change in Zimbabwe (The Sunday Mail and Sunday News, 6/2).

ZBH’s 16 reports on COSATU were constructed in the same fashion. Instead of honestly discussing the matter, the station distorted the purpose of the labour body’s mission by criminalizing the visit and vilifying the union as an appendage of Western machinations to destabilize the country.

Except for a single story in the Sunday Mirror (6/2), which sought simplistically to project labour movements as agents of Western interests, the rest of the private media steered clear of these conspiracy theories. However, there was a marked under-coverage of both the COSATU and FEWSNET issues by the private media. For instance, only six stories on the subjects appeared in the private Press. Though private radio stations carried more (seven) reports on COSATU they largely ignored FEWSNET issues during the week carrying only one report.

Nevertheless, it was only the private media, as exemplified by the Zimbabwe Independent and private stations, which alerted their readers to the politically damaging effects of the government’s deportation of the COSATU delegation.

However, private radio stations’ reports once again lacked balance relying heavily on COSATU for information almost to the exclusion of other sources as shown in Fig 3.

Fig 3 Voice distribution in the broadcast media

Although ZBH appeared to have sought comments from a wide range of commentators, its sources were largely supportive of government’s decision. For example, its alternative voices were the familiar ZANU PF and government activists such as William Nhara and Joseph Chinotimba.

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