|
Back to Index
World
Press Freedom Day
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2006-17
Monday April 24th 2006- Sunday April 30th
2006
AS the world
commemorated World Press Freedom Day, Secretary for Information
George Charamba still refused to accept the primary importance of
this essential universal freedom by subordinating it to the issue
of sovereignty and the need for repressive media legislation.
In a long-winded
article in The Herald (3/5), Charamba perpetuated absurd
official arguments subordinating Press freedom to selfishly defined
ruling party concepts of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘national interest’.
He argued that freedom of the Press was "a lesser freedom"
as "nowhere in human history has any nation sacrificed
its sovereignty" for it.
He claimed that
even the US’ First Amendment, under which freedom of expression
and the Press were famously defined remained "hopelessly
mediocre and supine when it comes to warding off corporate threats
to the same freedom, whoever prompts those threats" and
"does not place the media above the American State, its government
or its strategic interests".
As such, he
noted, Zimbabwe would also not "sacrifice its sovereignty
on the altar of Press freedom", which was an "auxiliary
right".
To further
dampen any hopes that government would repeal its repressive media
laws he added: "For as long as the Press traffics with foreign
causes and interests, in the process undermining State Security
and National Interest, laws such as AIPPA
and BSA will
stay justified and will even get strengthened" because
"anti-national" media "does not deserve
any protection".
Notably, the
paper found nothing ironic in juxtaposing the report with a picture
showing several newspaper mastheads, including that of the banned
Daily News, just to lend credence to Charamba’s warped arguments.
The caption falsely claimed: "Zimbabwe has a vibrant
media industry in which private and public-owned papers compete
freely for readership".
The paper also
carried another article by its political editor Caesar Zvayi arguing
that journalists should first demand indigenisation of the media
before they could advocate Press freedom.
However, in
their deliberate distortion of events to support their defence of
the official muzzling of the media both writers deliberately avoided
exposing how government had selectively applied these laws to stifle
alternative views while simultaneously entrenching the dominance
of the media it controls.
For example,
despite Charamba and Zvayi’s inferences that the media laws were
promulgated to safeguard the country’s ‘sovereignty’ or ‘national
interest’, none of the reasons behind the closure of Zimbabwe’s
the four private newspapers under these hostile laws were remotely
related to these issues.
As if to further
show the repressive nature of the country’s media laws, SW Radio
Africa (2/5) revealed that as the world was preparing to celebrate
Press Freedom Day, Harare had arrested two journalists from Botswana
"after crossing the border to cover a story on cattle
rustling" following "a series of livestock
thefts between the two countries".
The two were
reportedly charged for breaching sections of AIPPA and POSA.
Visit the MMPZ
fact sheet
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
