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Mutambara's
election & ZBH's skewed news values
Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2006-9
Monday February 27th – Sunday March 5th 2006
During the week
the government papers continued to use Arthur Mutambara’s ascendancy
to the presidency of one of the MDC factions to amplify and underpin
the confusion surrounding the opposition. It devoted 23 stories
to the matter.
Notably, none
of the stories saw anything positive out of Mutambara’s entry into
the country mainstream opposition politics. Rather, the papers handily
used his academic and professional background, which was largely
carved abroad, to contrive more conspiracies about the alleged treacherous
traits of the opposition party and its links with neo-colonialists.
For example,
The Herald (1/3) depicted Mutambara as a Western puppet,
parachuted into opposition politics by the US under a grand "hegemonic"
plan to impose "stooge" governments in the
world similar to alleged set-ups in Syria, "post-invasion
Iraq" and Afghanistan. The paper also dismissed Mutambara’s
acceptance speech as "shallow and reminiscent of student politics"
adding that he had rehashed "ZANU PF manifesto" in "attempts
to white wash the ugly face of the political party."
Although the
official papers cited many MDC voices in covering the subject as
shown in Fig 1, these were mainly quoted mudslinging each other.
Fig 1 Voice
distribution in the government Press
|
MDC
|
Unnamed
|
Govt
|
Alternative
|
|
24
|
3
|
3
|
2
|
The private
media’s coverage was generally fair and balanced. They continued
to assess the impact of Mutambara’s entry into national politics
in most of the 17 stories they carried (private papers [10] and
private stations [7]). For example, while the Zimbabwe independent
(3/3) noted that some critics had credited Mutambara for "raising
key issues and for his oratorical skills" during his
acceptance speech, it also observed that "others – including
diplomats present at the congress – felt he did not seize the opportunity
to make much political capital". The balanced portrayal
of the new opposition leader’s political fortunes were also captured
in two stories carried in The Financial Gazette (2/3).
However, all
three reports that the Mirror stable carried on the matter merely
dwelt on Mutambara’s alleged "ideological shift"
with The Daily Mirror on Saturday (5/3) claiming that the opposition
leader was "speaking with a forked tongue".
Notably, ZBH
largely suffocated the topic. In fact, the broadcaster’s suppression
of the subject underscored its skewed news values, which manifested
itself in ZBH giving prominence to apparently less important issues
while suffocating or censoring important stories during the week.
Its 8pm bulletins of the 2nd epitomized this poor news
selection. For example, Spot FM (2/3, 8pm) led with President Mugabe’s
campaign rally in Chegutu and preparations for the National Arts
Merit Award (NAMA) ceremony and relegated the more important reports
on the central bank’s closure of another financial institution,
Sagit Finance, and the re-opening of the CFX Bank to the end of
its bulletin.
Similarly, that
same evening ZTV chose to lead with an 11 minute report on NAMA
in its 8pm bulletin while burying news on the two financial institutions
in its business news. To make matters worse, the reports were allocated
only a total of 50 seconds.
Notably, while
ZBH was giving prominence to less important stories, that same evening
Studio 7 (2/3) led with new six cholera deaths in Gokwe and Kwekwe.
SW Radio Africa (2/3) also carried the report. The story never featured
on ZBH’s list of news items of the week. In fact, this was just
but one of the several other newsworthy reports that were ignored
by the government broadcaster. These included university students’
demonstration and the subsequent arrest of their leaders, the extension
of US’s targeted sanctions on the country’s leadership and the deportation
of South African labour expert Pete Horne on suspicion that she
was a member of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. These
only featured in the private media.
While the government
broadcaster suppressed such pertinent stories, it peddled irrelevant
statements made by government and ZANU PF officials at various events
as news. ZTV (1/3, 6pm) aptly captured this stance. For instance,
of the 12 items featured in the bulletin (excluding sport), eight
(67%) were passive regurgitations of statements by ministers and
ruling party officials, which were presented as news. These included
ZANU PF Midlands officials’ "desire to revive Zimbabwe’s
economy through agricultural production" and calls
by ZANU PF MP Biggie Matiza to other legislators to "allow
their constituencies to chart their own developmental projects".
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fact sheet
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