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Image use in storytelling
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2006-3
Monday January 16^th 2006 – Sunday January 22^nd 2006

THE adage, ‘A picture speaks a thousand words’, is often overused in the media fraternity. Yet it sums up the essence of the 89 images (cartoons and pictures) that appeared in the media during the week illustrating council, economic and agricultural issues in the country.

Of these images, 45 were carried in the government-controlled Press and the remaining 44 in private papers. A paper-to-paper breakdown of how the images appeared are shown in Fig. 1 and 2

Fig 1. Distribution of pictures in the government newspapers

Fig. 2 Image distribution in private newspapers

a) Council Issues
The private and government newspapers each carried 15 photos portraying council-related issues in the week. However, commendable photographs on the matter mostly appeared in The Herald and The Daily Mirror, which published graphic photos of the water crisis bedevilling some parts of Harare and Chitungwiza.

For example The Daily Mirror’s front page picture (16/1) depicted the water situation in some parts of Harare as so serious that armed municipal policemen had to be summoned to ensure order in Budiriro where residents queued for water at the suburb’s district offices. Women and children with containers were shown waiting patiently for their turn. The picture was taken after most of Harare’s high-density residents spent a whole weekend without water.

Two days later, the paper (18/1) reinforced the gravity of this crisis by carrying another photograph showing women washing clothes at an unprotected pool in Epworth for lack of tap water.

The Herald also carried pictures portraying council’s failure to provide basic amenities such as the non-collection of garbage (17/1) and residents of Mabvuku fetching water from unprotected wells (18/1).

The Standard (22/1) also captured Harare’s deteriorating health conditions by publishing a photograph of a barefoot woman "walking past pools of sewage" in one of the city’s suburbs.

b) Economic Issues
The Press carried a total of 35 images on economic issues, 15 of which were in the government Press and 20 in the private papers. However, most of the images were exceedingly dull portraits of government officials or those giving alternative opinions on Zimbabwe’s economic difficulties.

These unimaginative "mug-shots" were particularly evident in the Independent where four of the five images it carried on the matter were file photos. The exception was a graph depicting trends in the month-on-month inflation trends in 2004 and 2005.

But a cartoon in The Daily Mirror (16/1) was captivating as it illustrated the citizenry’s confusion over the relationship between a reduction in VAT to 15% from 17,5% and the continuing rise in the price of goods and services.

The Standard (22/1) cartoon also clearly portrayed the dire consequences of Zimbabwe’s inflationary environment when it satirically depicted a school child taking two trunks to school – one full of clothes, the other full of school fees.

b) Agricultural Issues
A total of 21 images were analysed on the topic. Of these, 14 were published in the government Press and the remaining seven in private papers. Notably, the official papers and the private Press provided contradicting pictures on the state of agriculture in the country. While the private Press, as exemplified by the Mirror stable, depicted the situation – characterised by input shortages as desperate – the government Press showed otherwise.

For example, The Herald (18/1) carried a photograph of a herd of cattle feeding on lush pasture to project the idea of a "beef bonanza" following an undertaking by the Cold Storage Company to release $72,5 billion to 272 farmers under the livestock credit scheme as part of efforts to rebuild the national herd.

Similar pictures depicting a flourishing agricultural sector appeared in The Manica Post and the Sunday News (22/1).

However, The Daily Mirror (17/1) carried a front-page picture of two vendors fighting over a bag of fertiliser in Mbare, highlighting the desperate extent of inputs shortages.

The Standard also exposed the confusion still riddling Zimbabwe’s land reforms by carrying a picture of an evicted spirit medium tending to her baby "by a jumble of her property" along the Chinhoyi Road after being evicted from her plot at Ballineety Farm in Zvimba.

The Independent and Gazette did not carry any pictures on the topic.

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