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Media fails to adequately report on local government polls
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2006-9
Monday February 27^th – Sunday March 5^th 2006

THE media’s gross abdication of their watchdog role, particularly the private ones, was clearly illustrated by their failure to adequately handle the just-ended local government polls. They generally gave scant attention to the election and, as a result, omitted pertinent information on the electoral process, which the ruling party has previously been accused of manipulating to ensure victory.

For example, none of the Press investigated the state of the voters’ roll, provided information on the campaign manifestos of the contestants or on the location of polling stations. Rather, the 10 stories the government papers carried on the matter were mainly passive regurgitations of pronouncements by the Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) on the electoral environment, ZANU PF’s campaign rallies and election results. In fact, except for stories on elections results and ZANU PF rallies, the rest of the electoral stories were largely snippets buried inside the papers. Further, the stories only began appearing in the papers just two days before the election day.

Similarly, none of ZBH’s 34 stories adequately discussed the mechanics governing the conduct of the election. Rather, half of the reports were on ZANU PF campaigns while the rest were on ZEC’s preparedness for the polls, voting and announcement of results. Campaign activities of opposition candidates were not mentioned.

In fact, the failure by the official media to subject the electoral process to scrutiny resulted in The Sunday Mail (5/2) failing to investigate the circumstances leading to "skirmishes involving Zanu-PF and MDC polling agents over a compiled list of voters who had cast their votes". Apart from revealing that the police "swiftly reacted to quell the disturbances" no further detail was provided on the matter.

However, The Standard (5/2) gave insight into the reasons behind the clashes and ZANU PF’s attempts to use unorthodox means to tilt the Chegutu mayoral poll in its favour. It reported that "three MDC supporters" were arrested "after they confronted ZANU PF agents taking down the names of voters at polling stations".

Reportedly, the ruling party agents were "promising voters maize meal" after the poll.

Notably, apart from this story, the rest of the private media totally ignored reporting on the elections. It is such dereliction of duty that gives the authorities leeway to manipulate the electoral process thereby denying the citizenry their right to choose leaders of their choice.

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