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Biased
news selection and presentation
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2006-30
Monday
July 24th 2006 - Sunday July 30th 2006
ZBH’s conversion
to an instrument of government propaganda was further illustrated
this week by its fawning coverage of ‘official functions’ while
ignoring other topical national developments.
The national
public broadcaster’s excessive coverage of President Mugabe’s opening
of Parliament was a case in point.
It drowned its
audiences in almost two hours of the proceedings: first beamed live
in the afternoon on all stations (25/7, 12pm), reported extensively
in all their ensuing news bulletins (1pm, 6pm & 8pm) and then
re-broadcast it in the evening on TV under its Current Affairs programme.
Notably, none
of the broadcaster’s news reports on the matter carried any clear
and balanced analysis of the occasion or the economic problems referred
to in Mugabe’s speech. Instead, its reports idolized him as a compassionate
leader "concerned about the welfare of Zimbabweans"
(Spot FM 26/7, 7am).
It was in this
context that ZBH ended up giving unnecessarily prominent coverage
to petty issues like the taking of photographs of the First Family,
the fly-pasts and the President’s inspection of the guard of honour.
For example, ZTV (25/7, 8pm) spent almost three minutes showing
and describing Mugabe’s new marble and ivory chair (resembling a
throne), which it said represented "solidarity, imperishability
(sic), permanence, indestructibility".
According to
the station, the lion skin on which the chair stood symbolised "power
and authority", the leopard skin that draped it epitomised
"royalty" while the two huge elephant
tusks that flanked it were "for protection from greatest
of forces".
Notably, the
station did not even show curiosity as to when Parliament’s interior
was redesigned or how much it cost.
While ZBH gave
its unfettered attention to these issues, SW Radio Africa and Studio
7 followed-up on the crippling effects of the junior doctors’ strike
and other pertinent political and economic news.
For example,
Spot FM (24/7, 8pm) ZTV and Radio Zimbabwe (25/7, 8pm) censored
news of the opposition MDC rallies in Kwekwe and Nkayi (Zimdaily
25/7). Instead they preferred to focus on ZANU PF’s council by-election
victory celebrations after the party won in two wards in Bulawayo
last February.
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fact
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