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Broadcasting Services Act (BSA)
Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2005-06
Monday February 7th - Sunday February 13th 2005

INFORMATION Minister Jonathan Moyo's announcement on ZTV (10/2, 8pm), The Herald and Chronicle (11/2) that government would gazette regulations on the coverage of political parties by ZBH once again exposed the media's failure to play their role as diligent watchdogs of government, particularly those relating to the electoral framework. The Herald and Chronicle reported Moyo saying government would draft regulations governing political parties' access to the media to ensure that "every political party has the right to have reasonable access to the media" as per Section 3 (c) (iv) of the Electoral Act and provided for by the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA).

The BSA states that "reasonable and equal opportunities" must be accorded to all contesting political parties to access the public media in the 33 days leading to the election. Moyo also stated that the print media were not obliged to give equal access to the parties saying these media were regulated under AIPPA, which "does not have any provision whatsoever that enables any political party to claim right of coverage during an election". None of the media subjected Moyo's statements to analysis.

For example, the media failed to point out that the government-controlled Press, by virtue of it being partly funded by the taxpayer, is obliged to give fair and impartial coverage to all parties anyway. Neither did the media inform their audiences about why it was government, an interested party, and not "independent" electoral bodies, such as the Zimbabwe Election Commission, that was formulating regulations on access to the media. As this report was being compiled, details of the regulations were released and MMPZ will review them in a separate issue. While Moyo was announcing that coverage of political parties would be guided by the regulations, ZANU PF continued to receive unbridled access to the national broadcaster. For instance, ZTV and Spot FM (11/2) changed their mid-morning programming to accommodate four hours of live coverage of the ruling party's launch of its campaign for the 2005 elections. In addition, the government broadcaster swamped its audiences with excerpts of the launch in its evening bulletins of the day.

As if that was not enough, ZTV carried repeats of the event after its main bulletin on Friday (11/2) and on Sunday morning. It remains to be seen if ZBH will also display such slavish generosity to the MDC, which was planning to launch it manifesto on February 20. Meanwhile, except for SW Radio Africa (7/2) none of the media updated their audiences on the ruling due to be given by the Supreme Court in The Daily News's case, which The Financial Gazette had previously reported would be delivered on February 7. The station reported that the paper's story was inaccurate. But it also failed to inform its audiences on the correct date the judgment was due to be delivered.

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