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Coverage of submissions made to parliamentary portfolio committees
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2006-36
Monday September 4^th 2006- Sunday September 10^th 2006

THE government media’s unreliability was reaffirmed by their coverage of submissions made to various parliamentary portfolio committees (PPCs) during the week.

Although they reported on most of the submissions, they largely fed on official statements to the PPCs and censored the committees’ displeasure at the manner in which some government departments were being administered.

This only emerged in the private media. The Financial Gazette (8/9), for example, reported the chairman of the PPC on Agriculture, Walter Mzembi, saying his committee was unhappy with the "testimony" from Agriculture Minister Joseph Made because it was "unconvincing" about the way his ministry was running agriculture. He noted that his committee believed there was "need to put in place proper administrative structures if the country’s agricultural sector is to reach its peak" because there was a "glaring lack of proper management structures at several institutions falling under Made’s ministry".

The government media ignored this, preferring to focus narrowly on Mzembi’s criticism of the Grain Marketing Board management (The Herald (6/9).

Similarly, The Herald and Chronicle (5/9) censored the concerns expressed by the PPC on Transport and Communications about sections of the proposed Interception of Communications Bill and gave prominence to Transport Minister Chris Mushohwe’s defence of the Bill.

It was only through The Daily Mirror (5/9) that the public got to know of some of the committee’s worries, which Mushohwe reportedly promised to address. But such open coverage of parliamentary proceedings could be curtailed. The Herald (8/9) reported Clerk of Parliament Austin Zvoma threatening to "bar" the media, which he claimed "distorted" parliamentary proceedings to "further their ulterior motives". The paper allowed him to twist the role of the media in covering public institutions such as Parliament when it passively reported him claiming, "covering Parliament was not a right but a privilege".

While the private media often performs better than their government counterparts in covering issues affecting people’s livelihoods, they have in some cases, displayed an appalling lack of interest in properly investigating numerous issues that are inadequately covered in the media. Their silence on the August 27^th Dibamombe train crash is a case in point. Like the official media, none of the mainstream private media has bothered to follow up on the crash to verify official claims on the causes of the accident, and the number of casualties.

Only SW Radio Africa (7/9) did so.

It reported villagers, national railways officials and medical workers who attended to the victims disputing official casualty figures, saying they were far too low for a collision that involved a goods train carrying inflammable products and a passenger train carrying hundreds of Zimbabweans and Zambians returning from South Africa.

They claimed that "more than 100 people" could have died in the crash in contrast to the official record of seven deaths. An unnamed railway official told the station that the five that were initially reported as having died were "actually crew members".

Eyewitnesses confirmed this, claiming that at least "two coaches packed with people were burnt", while an unnamed nurse said that 189 people had been treated and not just 20 as reported in the media.

According to the report, the official figures were so unconvincing that Zambian authorities sent an investigating team to corroborate them.

The failure by the mainstream media to independently investigate the matter once again exposes their limitations and demonstrates a desperate public need for more media outlets prepared to investigate the mysteries that remain unanswered by Zimbabwe’s few surviving media organizations.

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