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Zimbabwe's
media fails to inform public on important national issues
Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2005-43
Monday November
7th 2005 – Sunday November 13th 2005
THE government
media and the private Press’ inept coverage of the arrest, detention
and release of union workers, university students and other national
civic leaders stands testimony to the grave extent to which Zimbabwe’s
battered media have abdicated their professional duty to inform
the public on important national issues.
For example,
on the morning the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) demonstrated
against the rising cost of living, The Herald and Chronicle
(8/11) simply drowned their readers with government’s vilification
of the labour body. No full report on the reasons for the protest
was provided.
Instead, Labour
Minister Nicholas Goche was given excessive space to dismiss the
demonstration as a "gimmick to achieve a political agenda
that will not help the workers", adding that the planned
action exposed ZCTU’s "involvement in opposition politics"
and "organisations sponsored by external forces to prop
up MDC".
The papers then
quoted one of the few affiliates campaigning to oust the ZCTU leadership
echoing Goche’s claims, instead of seeking comment from the ZCTU.
And when news
of the arrest of 152 unionists filtered out, The Herald (9/11)
buried it in a story accusing Britain of rallying its Western allies
to demonise Zimbabwe.
The paper did
not report the demo as a story in its own right and refused to question
whether the arrest of peaceful protesters was a blatant violation
of constitutionally guaranteed rights to free expression, assembly
and association. Rather, it sought to malign the ZCTU as one of
the organisations used by Britain to "incite people to
go into the streets to kick-start a Ukranian-style "Orange
Revolution’".
The Herald’s
attempt to criminalise dissent was also evident in its report (10/11)
on the separate arrests of Chitungwiza Mayor Misheck Shoko and National
Constitutional Assembly chairman Lovemore Madhuku on allegations
of "inciting public violence and agitating for the removal
of government through violent means". The paper supinely
quoted the police outlawing the addresses the two made at separate
meetings in Chitungwiza and Norton without questioning whether the
banning constituted a rights violation.
Subsequently,
the paper (11/11 & 12/11) announced that Madhuku, Shoko, the
ZCTU leadership and 33 demonstrators had been released after the
police failed to provide sufficient evidence against them but remained
silent on the fate of scores of other protesters who were also detained.
ZBH completely censored news of the arrests and detentions, and
news of the victims’ release.
The private
Press was little better. Like the government Press, the private
papers generally failed to give a comprehensive picture of the scale
of the protests nor did they holistically relate the arrests to
the systematic erosion of Zimbabweans’ basic freedoms.
Informative
detail only appeared on the two outlawed radio stations, SW Radio
Africa and Studio 7, which provided daily updates on the fate of
the unionists. Their Friday bulletins (11/11) also announced the
unionists release due to lack of evidence. The Daily Mirror carried
the story the following day. But The Standard (13/11) failed
to carry any informative news feature on the week’s momentous events.
Visit the MMPZ
fact sheet
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