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ZBH's Bleeps and blunders
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2006-6
Monday February 6^th 2006 – Sunday February 12^th 2006

ZBH’s poor showing was not restricted to its news desk alone but seemed to have polluted its technical departments as well. Prominent among the blunders monitored by the MMPZ during the week were poor sound quality, misattribution and footage mix-ups.

ZTV (8/2, 6pm) represented the most irritating example.

Not only did the bulletin demonstrate a severely compromised sense of news values by running five consecutive spiritless stories on gender equality, it completely rendered the subject incoherent by its video mix-ups and distortion of the identities of its eight female sources.

The first blunder occurred in item two of the bulletin when the reader announced: "Some female parliamentarians say problems being faced by women currently can only be rectified if policies and laws that protect women can be implemented in all sectors."

However, none of the three sources were identified or confirmed as "parliamentarians". Instead, the first woman on the videotape was identified as Sheila Mahere of Msasa Project while the second was given two different names – Sithokozile Thebethe and Ester Zana. The third source remained nameless.

No apologies or corrections were made.

The blundering continued in the next story. The report introduced a fresh set of three sources using the same names as those of the "parliamentarians" but this time as representatives of civic organisations. While the ‘new’ Mahere remained with her Msasa Project tag, Thebethe and Zana were now presented as two separate individuals representing the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association and the Zimbabwe Women’s Land Lobby Group respectively.

The bulletin’s fifth news item added to the news desk’s confusion. It left its audiences grinding their teeth in frustration over who between the two women in the news footage was Anna Mumba of the United Nations Population Fund as there were no accompanying captions.

The next day saw ZTV (9/2, 8pm) completely lose its sense of news values by leading with an otherwise nondescript "courtesy call" on acting president Joice Mujuru by incoming Pakistani ambassador Rifat Iqbal while "burying" five more cholera deaths in the country deep into the bulletin.

Earlier, ZTV (7/2, 8pm) illustrated some of the poor news reading skills of its staff when it featured Gilbert Nyambabvu describing the Small Medium Enterprises as the "information sector" instead of the informal sector.

No apologies.

a) Pictures and Cartoons

DURING the week MMPZ also examined the Press’ use of pictures and cartoons to illustrate the collapse of basic amenities in local authorities and the continued economic decline.

A breakdown of how the images appeared is shown in Figs 1 and 2.

Fig 1 Distribution of images in the government papers

Fig 2 Distribution of images in the private Press

b) Local Government
THE Press carried 16 images on the problems affecting Harare and the failure by municipalities to provide basic services to residents. Most of these appeared in The Herald and The Daily Mirror. These papers carried cartoons highlighting the adverse effects of the bickering between Harare’s council mandarins Mhende and Chideya.

The Herald (6/2), for example, depicted residents as the grass bearing the brunt of the fight between the two, which it portrayed as two elephants. The Mirror (8/2) also captured the destructive nature of the infighting through a cartoon which showed a crumbling Town House splitting into two.

The Herald and the Chronicle also carried photographs highlighting the collapse of basic amenities in Harare and Bulawayo.

The Daily Mirror (8/2) emphasised the extent to which Harare’s roads had become impassable by carrying a cartoon showing a bus trying to avoid yawning potholes with its occupants suggesting that Harare council "might need to build bridges over some of these potholes".

Although the Chronicle (9/2) also graphically captured indicators of poor service delivery, it used its front-page picture of residents in Old Pumula filling up potholes to reinforce its earlier call (6/2) for government’s intervention in the administration of Bulawayo. It noted that residents had decided to repair the roads "after the Bulawayo City Council failed to maintain the roads".

c) Economic decline
The Press used 29 images to illustrate their stories on the country’s economic decline, 22 of which were in the Private press and seven in the government papers. However, 11 of the 12 images in The Standard, the Zimbabwe Independent, and The Financial Gazette were mere "mug-shots" of mostly government and business officials.

Only one cartoon carried by the Zimbabwe Independent humorously tried to expose President Mugabe’s claims that there were no food shortages as Zimbabweans could eat potatoes and rice as substitutes for their staple maize meal.

It was only the official dailies and The Daily Mirror that carried images illustrating the country’s continued economic decline.

For instance, The Herald (6/2) carried a picture of a dangerously sagging live electricity cable in Highfield to demonstrate the failure by the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) to maintain its infrastructure, which has partly contributed to persistent power outages. To emphasise the gravity of the situation the paper (7/2) featured a picture of a woman using firewood to cook following a power cut in Chitungwiza.

The Daily Mirror (10/2) also carried a pictorial of an Air Zimbabwe plane, which was grounded due to the shortage of foreign currency needed to procure spare parts. According to the accompanying story, the plane was one of the two Boeing 737s that were grounded as a result of severe foreign currency shortages.

However, that same day The Herald seemingly tried to gloss over problems at the parastatal by carrying a rosy picture of passengers disembarking from an Air Zimbabwe plane to illustrate its story on a deal that would see the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe supplying the airline with fuel.

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