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State
of the public media in Zimbabwe
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2006-22
Monday
May 29th 2006 – Sunday June 4th 2006
This week The
Herald (2/6) and ZTV (6/6) reported the Parliamentary Portfolio
Committee on Transport and Communication as having recommended the
opening of the airwaves and the restructuring of Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Holdings (ZBH) "to revert to the old ZBC".
The Herald quoted
Committee member Forbes Magadu as saying the Broadcasting Authority
of Zimbabwe (BAZ) should "regularise the requirements
to operate a radio or TV station to allow other players to participate"
adding: "BAZ should focus on issuing out (sic) licences
in 2006 especially the community radios in every district. Other
players should enter the market."
These represented
some of the recommendations from the Committee’s first report on
the state of the public media in Zimbabwe.
But instead
of raising fundamental questions about why it is taking so long
to licence new broadcasters, the government-controlled media merely
focused on the poor pay of its journalists. They neither elaborated
on the committee’s concerns about the stringent requirements for
prospective broadcasters, nor raised questions on the key issue
of how to run ZBH on a professional and sound commercial basis.
Further, they
did not question the impression that reverting to the old ZBC structures
would solve the problems at the broadcaster, which apart from lack
of profitability and poor programming, suffers from grossly biased
editorial manipulation and interference from the authorities.
In fact, the
need for alternative public sources of information was further demonstrated
this week by the European Union (EU)’s complaints on the continued
distortion of information regarding its "relations" with
Zimbabwe. In a statement published in The Daily Mirror (31/05) and
also cited in The Financial Gazette (1/6), the EU stated: "there
are no economic sanctions against Zimbabwe. There have never been
economic EU sanctions against Zimbabwe".
Economist Eric
Bloch also observed in the Independent (2/06) that the EU "has
not imposed any economic sanctions against Zimbabwe."
In spite of
the factual information provided in the EU statement to demonstrate
that it is engaged in trade with Zimbabwe, the public media would
not relent. Rather, they found their defence, ironically, in the
head of the government-appointed Media and Information Commission,
Dr. Tafataona Mahoso who, while entitled to his opinion, did not
distinguish it from fact, as is the norm in journalism practice.
Contributing
in The Sunday Mail (4/06), Dr Mahoso attacked the EU statement for
"desperately" trying to justify this "cowardly apartheid
tactic" but failed to present facts to demonstrate his allegations
of the "evil and destructive consequences of the sanctions
for the 13 million citizens of Zimbabwe".
MMPZ laments
the fact that as the chairman of the Media and Information Commission
responsible for encouraging ethical journalistic practice, Dr. Mahoso
chose to attack the EU instead of investigating their complaints.
This reinforces calls for the dissolution of the MIC and its replacement
with a voluntary media council run by journalists, publishers and
stakeholders in civil society.
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.
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