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Online agencies
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2006-29
Monday July 17^th 2006 - Sunday July 24^th 2006

DURING the week online agencies provided alternative platforms to publicise and debate important national developments that are so often censored or missed by the mainstream media.

The agencies have made important contributions in exposing government misrule and human rights abuses, as well as giving alternative voices more say in news about the country’s socio-political and economic development.

However, this has been compromised sometimes by their failure to adhere to basic journalistic standards.

Noticeable weaknesses during the week have been inaccuracies, lack of balance and the failure to confirm factual claims. For example, New Zimbabwe.com (17/7) reported the authorities as having seized the passport of former Harare mayor Elias Mudzuri under "Amendment 22 of the constitution".

This is incorrect, as no such amendment exists.

As Zim Online reported, the AG’s office pointed out that even under Amendment 17 government does not have the power "to withdraw a citizen’s travel documents without a specific Act of Parliament stipulating the exact conditions and offences for which such documents can be seized by the state".

Zimdaily also failed to live up to the journalistic principle of providing balance in their stories when it carried two reports on the activities of the MDC faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai based only on comments from the group’s spokesman, Nelson Chamisa. As a result, the stories lacked authority since they did not have collaborated facts from independent sources.

In fact, the agency continued to give more publicity to the Tsvangirai-led MDC than the one headed by Arthur Mutambara.

There is no way of knowing whether the Tsvangirai faction is "making more news" than the Mutambara faction, or is simply making better use of these media than its rivals. But during the week Zimdaily published five stories quoting MDC voices, in which the Tsvangirai faction was heard five times while the Mutambara group was heard only once. It did not inform its readers whether it had problems contacting the Mutambara faction.

New Zimbabwe.com (20/7) and Zimdaily (21/7) were also guilty of failing to seek official confirmation of alleged human rights abuses committed by state security agents. While they reported the heavy-handed police response to a peaceful public demonstration by members of the Combined Harare Residence Association protesting the incompetence of local authorities, which reportedly resulted in the arrest of 19 people, the agencies gave their audiences no idea whether they attempted to corroborate these statistics with the police.

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