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The fourth estate and I, by head of Zim's MIC
Journalism.co.za
August 03, 2005
http://www.journalism.co.za/modules.php?
In a lengthy interview
with Zimbabwe's state-owned Herald, Media and Information Commission chairman,
Dr Tafataona Mahoso, speaks out on media terrorism, why the Daily News
isn't being allowed back on the streets and even about Judge Hillary Squires.
The state-owned
Herald introduces the interview as follows:
One of the biggest
problems Zimbabwe faced over the past five years is the problem of media
terrorism that manifested itself in sensational reports in the privately
owned Press and Western media, pirate radio stations that broadcast hate
speech and a proliferation of on line publications pursuing the illegal
regime change agenda. Today, Media and Information Commission Chairman,
Dr Tafataona Mahoso talks about media practice and regulation in Zimbabwe.
Dr Mahoso, you
have been branded number one enemy of the media by some of the titles
whose licences were cancelled. How would you describe your relationship
with the media?
My relationship with the media depends on which media it is. There
are so many media in Zimbabwe, as you know the word includes even those
Internet sites that are proliferating. I would not mind being called an
enemy of the media by some of those channels because they have become
part of the global conveyor belt of lies. We live in a very dangerous
world where the media have become an integral part of invasion. The examples
of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and even Haiti and Granada and the Falkland
Islands - all these are graphic examples of the abuse of the media and
if the media which corroborate with such forces of inhumanity call me
the number one enemy, it does not surprise me or cause me any regrets.
However, there are other media in Zimbabwe who are trying to do an honest
job and who are working under difficult conditions. I know that for instance,
the programme of the foreigners in Zimbabwe since the 1990s has been to
try to make the white minority voice the mainstream voice in Zimbabwe,
and at the helm of this we have the Swedish International Development
Agency (Sida) and Norwegian Development Agency (Norad). So we are aware
of that programme and I know that the people who say I am an enemy of
the media are people who are aware that I am aware of that strategy.
The internet and
on-line newspapers are presenting major challenges to the regulatory regimes
of developing countries, how can Zimbabwe deal with the scourge of on-line
newspapers some of which are peddling hate speech?
There are a number of fronts on which we should fight. The first one is
that we must have some of our own sites which are reviewed regularly,
the MIC is in the process of trying to do that, we have just interviewed
the candidates for our Information Communication Technology section. We
intend to have two things;
One is round-the-clock
media monitoring, and each morning we review which stories were on radio,
TV or even on the Internet in order to advise our stakeholders about what
will be happening in the media.
The other front has
to do with regulation, and at the moment I am not clear whether Government
has actually decided which agency will be responsible for the electronic
media beyond broadcasting. There has to be some legislation to regulate
those channels that are not catered for under the Broadcasting Services
Act (BSA) or the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).
The third front is
by training and by training we do not mean training of journalists, training
journalists is also important but we have to find ways of training the
audience.
The Media Ethics Committee
Report was an attempt to do that. We found out that the consultations
that we held when we went out were effective ways of empowering people
because, first of all we invited them to say what their experience of
media had been and then we shared with them some insights which they might
not have had. In the process they also told us what they wanted to be
done with the media. So media users need to be trained but as in every
country, they are scattered they have no centre of their own. We want
media critics who are not journalists but who are citizens who can also
advise citizen groups about the role of the media in a national setting.
MIC has monitored
the papers published in Zimbabwe, but you have done nothing about a paper
called The Zimbabwean, which is always on our streets just like all other
weekly papers and pirate radio stations. Are these media exempt from laws
affecting titles published in Zimbabwe?
That is a concern of ours but as you know the Commission is not a
law maker but is bound by the Act that it uses, it is empowered to make
proposals to Government, and there is a proposal with Government on how
The Zimbabwean problem can be solved. But while we wait for a response
from Government we have of course not been idle, I think you will remember
the responses that the MIC gave when the paper was first introduced. We
believe that the moral critique of the Zimbabwean succeeded in weakening
the paper and subsequently we are told that its finances are very weak
and we do know definitely that its impact in the country is negligible.
So if the Government eventually responds to the proposals that we put
before it, it will not be because the paper has a huge impact, but because
in future there may be six or seven similar papers being dropped into
Zimbabwe from outside. But the weaknesses of the paper are very clear
both morally, ethically and even technically because you can not write
effective stories from a desk in London, and our people know what London
stands for in Zimbabwe. So the paper more or less has discredited itself
before the Government has actually legislated to control similar developments
in the future. We are glad in fact that the people in Zimbabwe, because
of their understanding of ethics and morality, their understanding of
communication they have been able to resist this paper, so that it is
simply tolerated as a nuisance among many other nuisances that we have
to put up with.
You chaired a Media
Ethics Committee between 2001 and 2002 that looked into professionalism
or lack thereof in the media, what were your findings and what became
of the report you submitted?
The report was of course done for the Department of Information at that
time, it was really meant as a policy guideline but it was also intended
as a resource for media studies programmes. We have seen quite a number
of these recommendations being implemented, the creation and strengthening
of the BSA and the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe; the creation of
MIC was actually echoed in the recommendations. What we discovered was
that all the people we consulted recommended that we could not rely on
voluntary regulation, there should be statutory regulation. The experience
of the previous 21 years - for this was in 2001, had shown that journalists
in Zimbabwe would not self regulate and that the manoeuvres that were
being made by donors were making it even more unlikely. But we also dealt
with training. We have seen a lot of the report being implemented, even
the idea of local content, we can see the idea there.
In one of your
articles, you accused journalists of reporting events instead of relationships
between events, and a few months ago your office said it was going to
look into the curriculum and qualifications of the staff offering journalism
training, how far have you gone with this initiative?
It is a huge project and we have already designed questionnaires, there
are three of them, one for editors, one for media trainers and one for
the students themselves. Rather than mail them, we decided that we should
actually present them in person. What we have noticed is that the students
are very eager to tell us what they are experiencing and the quality of
their experience. The administrators are reluctant but so far we have
said that we do not want to resort to section 50 of AIPPA, where we can
actually subpoena information, we want a corroborative system, where they
voluntarily give us information but the information has to be correct.
The questionnaires
are very thorough, what they require is thorough documentation. How many
students do you have per computer? How many students are there for every
full time lecturer? How many part time lecturers do you have? What is
the minimum qualification of the lecturers and so forth? There are also
questions like what is the aptitude of the student you produce at the
end of the programme, are you achieving that, what kind of examinations
are you giving at the end of the programme? Who is able to double-check
your examinations, is it a self-contained system where if you cheat on
your own exam, nobody finds out? We believe that when the results come
out it will be a big report. We already know a number of things that are
quite disturbing, that the numbers of students who are in so-called journalism
courses are too many. There are just too many students for the market.
It appears that in one year, the training institutions produce enough
students to replace all the full time journalists, which is unsustainable.
Apart from the problem
of quality the overcrowding is not good. It is important to mention that
we do not have a statutory mandate to discipline the media training institutions,
that mandate belongs to the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education.
However, we do have power to influence and redirect and what we have done
in recognition of that power is that we know for instance that we can
give prizes, and there are a number of subject areas where of students
excel we can give prizes of up to a million dollars. We want to give prizes
in areas that we think are not being adequately addressed at the moment.
Gradually, we want to tighten the qualifications, we will reach a stage
where we say these certificates are not acceptable, and in fact we are
already beginning to do that. There is one certificate going round, which
has a good transcript but that can not be justified, this is a certificate
obtained by correspondence school, than one we have already said we won't
use. The holders are using five published articles in lieu of the certificate.
Critics say the
MIC is being vindictive by waiting to pounce on Journalists who violate
ethics, instead of monitoring the training to ensure that all who lay
claim to journalism have been thoroughly trained. What you have outlined
are long term measures, what will you do in the short term?
Our view is that it is not really the journalists, much of what we see
as unethical conduct is the responsibility of the employers and editors,
therefore everyone who approaches MIC wanting to register, a publisher
or a mass media service, has to produce a proposed code of ethics. We
are busy collating all the submissions from publishers; we will publish
a volume of all the codes of ethics, which have been proposed by mass
media service providers in Zimbabwe. There will be a section for newspaper
publishers, magazine publishers, advertisers and publication houses. With
a volume like that, we can then go to the stakeholders to say this is
what you have suggested. We think that all of them are weak in certain
areas, and those are the ones we want to discuss before we actually synthesise
a national code. We believe that is the way to go. A journalist may have
good intentions, and may have in his possession a good code of ethics,
we have among the ones that we collected during the media Ethics Committee,
a code ethics proposed by Geoffrey Nyarota, yet his practice had nothing
to do with that code of ethics. It was just a paper, so we do not want
to fool ourselves. When we come up with the code, it will be based on
submissions and it will be discussed, our strategy is that once the volume
is produced we will give it to media users.
Some critics say
the MIC has been visible only where a newspaper is about to be closed,
apart from the closure of unregistered titles, what other changes has
the MIC brought to the media?
The first change is simply that in 2002, around June or thereafter, because
we were actually appointed afterwards, there was nothing except a piece
of paper called AIPPA. So the problem with some journalists is that they
see the coming of the MIC as an event, it is a very detailed process.
From the Act we had to envision an organogram, an office structure, committee
structures, even personnel - how to define people who work in the organisation.
What is in the Act is just the board, the Commissioners. The Secretariat
is not there, so we had to spell out the kind of posts essential to fulfil
the requirements of the Act, all that has been done. We now have a Media
Trust Fund in terms of the Act; the fund will be used for media development.
The only hurdle is that the amount of money is not enough for the problems
that we have to deal with. I believe in two and a half years, we have
done a lot.
There was a workshop
that was held in Nyanga after AIPPA became law, it was co-ordinated by
Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA), but other so-called human
rights organisations were there.
They gave themselves
duties, the Law Society of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, (ZUJ)
Independent Journalists' Association of Zimbabwe (IJAZ), and ZIMRIGHTS
- to scrap the legislation. Obviously the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe
(ANZ) is best known for that, but there were various efforts all over
the place. The first responsibility of the MIC is to defend the Act, and
we have done that successfully, and it is only after the legislation is
secured that we could implement the development side of the Act.
Much of that can not
be visible, in the sense that you have to start by creating a Commission
where there was just an Act, the fact that they can actually see a Commission
becoming visible means that we have achieved something.
And your relationship
with ZUJ?
I understand that they have approached the Minister of Information with
a proposal for self-regulation, and a code of ethics. There was an attempt
to say that we (the MIC) are afraid of their ethics and we want to stop
it no. In fact the problem is that it was ZUJ, IJAZ and MISA who have
misled people and misled even the rest of the world that AIPPA makes self-regulation
illegal and impossible. AIPPA does not actually forbid self-regulation,
in fact, the Commission would be very happy if the journalists were able
to discipline themselves because it would mean that our resources would
then be directed towards the development side of the Act which is quite
enough to absorb our energies and resources.
So we would welcome
self-regulation, though we are saying that in terms of weight the employers
have more weight in determining the direction of a newspaper than the
journalists.
The original challenge
to stop MIC did not come from ANZ, it came from ZUJ, which filed an urgent
application before Justice Makoni saying the whole thing should stop,
and they gave reasons. The first reason was that the form the MIC was
using was demanding information that was too sensitive and too private
to be given to a government agency. The second reason they gave was that
the MIC had not notified the journalists and had not published the forms.
All we did was to take forms which the journalists routinely fill at workshops,
when they apply for loans or when they join an NGO, and the information
was almost identical. It had everything, e-mail, home address, business
address, telephone, the same information that MIC was asking for except
for the fact that these NGOs and other organisations do not give legal
guarantees that this information will be used for the purposes for which
it is collected. We have two Sections in the Act, Section 50 and Section
33, which actually say this information will be used only for the purpose
for which it is collected. We then produced articles which the journalists
had published in the Sunday Mail, in the Daily News and other newspapers,
to show that in fact the journalists were aware of the regulations and
the procedures, so Justice Makoni actually threw out the case.
The media is a
critical institution in society, which is why some have called it the
fourth estate. Do you feel the Zimbabwe media can be described as the
fourth estate?
No! Because of the origins of journalism in the first place. Media operators
say that they are there to promote accountability, democracy, transparency,
human rights and so forth, so we asked the question during the Media Ethics
Committee: Where did journalism come from as an aspect of communication?
Journalism started as part and parcel of the machinery of foreign intervention,
and I always refer to the example of Henry Morton Stanley, who came to
Africa assigned by the New York Herald Tribune in 1869, what was he looking
for? He was looking for the North Atlantic agenda in Africa, he was not
looking for Africans and he is not known for writing a story about what
Africans were doing or saying, he is known for recognising a white man
in Africa - "Dr David Livingstone, I presume?"
We are saying therefore,
when did journalism drop this agenda and start becoming a fourth estate,
and we say that the part of the media which represents the majority interests
in Zimbabwe came from exile during the Rhodesian days, it came from Mozambique,
from Zambia, to the extent that the Director General of the Rhodesian
Broadcasting Corporation in 1976 told an American Editor, "the reason
why Africans are not allowed anywhere near a microphone is that they when
an African gets a microphone he stirs up violence against the whiteman".
So when we saw Sida and Norad, coming back in the 1990s wanting to reinvent
that minority media to make it mainstream again, we found we did not have
a fourth estate. We have a struggle between the external foreign voice
embedded among us, and the African voice which has come from exile and
is establishing itself and has not yet fully overcome the obstacles created
by the minority media, and one reason is that Zimbabwe is a neighbour
to a country where the minority voice is still mainstream - South Africa.
That is why a hangman judge, Hillary Squires of the UDI and Apartheid
era is being celebrated in the South African media as a man who is fighting
corruption, when in actual fact the fact that Squires is a judge is in
itself a manifestation of white racism as a form of corruption. If we
were living in an uncorrupted world, Squires would be on trial at a war
tribunal for the crimes against humanity in Rhodesia. So it is not yet
a fourth estate, it is struggling to be.
The MIC has again
refused to register the ANZ, and some critics have reduced the issue to
a Mahoso - ANZ affair, what exactly is the problem?
The first part to my answer is that the matter is still subjudice. But
there are a few points that can be discussed, the first piece of information
the public should know is that this was not a fresh application, it was
an old application which the Supreme Court remitted to the MIC, and remittal
means that the Supreme Court was saying to the ANZ go back to the MIC
to have your case heard again, because you are alleging that when the
decision to deny registration was made you were not given an opportunity
to answer to each of the contraventions had submitted made in the determination.
So the purpose off coming back was to have the ANZ answer the contraventions,
and then the Commission decides whether those answers exonerated them
or convicted them. That is the first part. The second part is that the
determination is available, and there is no need to speculate what the
reason for the basis of the decision were. Lastly, the matter is in court,
and we will submit to the courts.
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