Back to Index

Economic meltdown
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2006-28
Monday July 10^th 2006- Sunday July 16^th 2006

THIS week the official media used the marginal drop in June’s inflation by 8.9 percent to market this as a dividend of government’s National Economic Development Priority Programme (NEDPP).

They carried 54 stories giving this impression, 47 of which were carried by ZBH and the rest by the government papers.

As a result of this lopsided approach, there was barely any coherent analysis of the development or attempts to establish the veracity of the inflation figures. Neither did they reconcile this development with revelations during the same period that the monthly breadbasket for a family of five had soared to $68.4 million, nor remind their audiences that despite the fall, inflation remained the highest in the world.

Instead, they attributed the dip to government’s "current economic initiatives…[such as] NEDPP and Operation Maguta" (ZTV, 11/7, 8pm) without analysis.

The Herald of the same day also made similar generalisations, linking the decline to government’s NEDPP, which "seeks to reduce inflation to manageable levels by year-end".

None of the alternative voices the government media sourced were given the opportunity to fully express their cautionary sentiments about this development. For example, while Spot FM (12/7,1pm) reported economist Farai Dyirakumunda guardedly welcoming the decline as encouraging, it did not investigate the persistent "inflationary pressures" that he alleged still posed a danger to the economy.

Neither did The Herald (12/7) check with economist Blessing Sakupwanya why he felt it was "unlikely" that inflation would "come down significantly this year due to the high inflationary pressures present in the economy". Instead, it reported three unnamed analysts as having "welcomed" the new figures saying although the "percentage decline was small, the outcome was positive for the economy."

The next day, the paper’s columnist Victoria Ruzvidzo summed up these media’s intolerance of alternative opinion by castigating those who questioned the figures, saying it showed that Zimbabweans were now "so used to the negative to the extent that anything positive can only be a fluke".

She asked: "Have we been so brainwashed to the extent that we only accept and tolerate the negative while brushing aside any indication that things could be changing for the better?"

The government media’s failure to critically examine the issue fitted their efforts to avoid open discussion of the country’s economic crisis while simultaneously depicting government as taking measures to address it.

This was illustrated by the 113 stories they carried on the economy (ZBH [67] and official papers [46]), which either highlighted indicators of economic decay in isolation of their root causes, or merely glossed over these difficulties.

This included passive coverage in The Herald and Chronicle (14/7) of Mugabe’s claims that government was "working flat out to turn around the economy", which was "under siege from illegal sanctions imposed by Britain and her allies".

The official media’s uncritical coverage of the topic basically arose from their over reliance on official pronouncements as shown in Figs 1 and 2.

Fig. 1 Voice distribution in the government Press

Fig. 2 Voice Distribution on ZBH

It was not only the official media that simplistically celebrated the drop in inflation.

The Mirror stable also carried 17 stories that largely gave a sanitised picture of the problems. Its uncritical position was exemplified by The Daily Mirror (12/7), which narrowly viewing the dip in inflation as a sign of better times ahead, saying it "raises belief" in government’s NEDPP and "can at least be a psychological boost" that "should give every Zimbabwean reason to smile and an impetus to soldier on".

However, the rest of the 27 stories carried by other private media (private papers [21] and private electronic media [6]) did not demonstrate such professional gullibility.

Instead, they cited analysts dismissing attempts to project the inflation decline as a precursor to the country’s economic recovery as simplistic, noting that the fall was too little to offer any comfort to the country’s economy. They also poured scorn on hopes of any immediate economic recovery, saying as long as government continued to pursue skewed policies the future remained bleak.

For instance, The Financial Gazette (13/7) criticised the official media and their commentators for cheering the inflation fall, saying "with the Zimdollar taking a new battering (during the) week and fuel prices adding fresh bite, there is little to suggest anybody has been jumping over the bushes in excitement" over the state of the economy.

The Zimbabwe Independent (14/7) concurred, noting that "the din of celebrations" over inflation was "a lullaby to a dying soul" as the country’s economy still tottered on the brink of collapse.

And although that evening Studio 7 reported economist John Robertson predicting a further decline in inflation in July, he foresaw it rising thereafter to between 1,500 and 2,000% due to government’s continued bad economic policies.

The private media’s sourcing pattern, as exemplified by the private papers, is shown in Fig 3.

Fig 3 Voice distribution in the private Press

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