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ZTV
News Management
Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2006-42
Monday
October 16th 2006 – Sunday October 22nd 2006
ZBH News Values:
Top Stories
MMPZ
monitored the news value of seven ‘top’ stories that ZTV aired in
its evening main news bulletins during the week. None of them deserved
the top slot. The stories were basically based on mundane official
pronouncements or uninformative follow-ups to the authorities’ responses
to pertinent national issues. Some of the reports simply allowed
government officials’ attendance of certain events to overshadow
the substance of the occasions. Such stories included the authorities’
official opening of the 40th Distance Education Association
of Southern Africa Conference in Harare and the Thembelihle Halfway
Home for AIDS patients in Bulawayo (ZTV 20 & 21/10, 8pm).
In fact, while
the government has a duty to inform the public about its policies,
ZTV did not interpret or logically present these to its audiences
in the top stories it carried. Thus, it ended up passively perpetuating
the authorities’ misrepresentations and unfounded optimism on important
national developments. For example, ZTV (17/10) reported approvingly
of how "the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA)
has expressed satisfaction with this year’s Travel Expo"
without substantiating the claims of the "lucrative
deals" that had been clinched. The station only
vaguely promised that results of the Travel Expo would become
"visible in the next 18 months".
Similarly, the
next day ZTV did not question the dismissal by the Grain Marketing
Board (GMB) boss Samuel Muvuti, of claims by bakers that the recent
hike in the bread price had been triggered by wheat shortages. Neither
did it verify his claims that the GMB had "adequate
wheat stocks to meet the country’s demands this year…"
Ironically, that
same night Studio 7 quoted Agriculture Minister Joseph Made acknowledging
wheat shortages in the country, saying the Finance Ministry had
yet to release funds to buy the commodity.
Besides being
uninformative, ZTV’s top stories were basically dry. Finance Minister
Herbert Murerwa’s official opening of the distance education conference,
where he reportedly urged Africa "to continue prioritising
education as a way of creating a strong human resource base",
was a case in point.
ZTV’s distorted
news values as reflected in its top stories appeared to have rubbed
off onto the rest of the station’s reports too. For instance, ZTV
(19/10, 8pm) gave greater attention to Education Minister Aeneas
Chigwedere’s routine calls for NGOs to "work together
beyond a culture of conferences and workshops" than
on the shocking revelations of girl-child school dropouts in Matebeleland.
It was only at the end of the news bulletin that the reporter disclosed:
"In Umguza the school dropout rate for girls was 25%."
Even then, the station did not provide reasons for the dropout
nor give statistics on the number of boy dropouts in the region.
Vox Pops
Instead
of using its vox pop surveys to add value to its news coverage,
ZBH uses them as convenient tools to endorse pre-conceived ideas
on various issues. This sometimes results in the station carrying
misleading headlines on such stories. For example, ZTV (18/10,8pm)
alleged, "consumers and retailers have castigated bakers
for creating artificial shortages to push for unjustified price
increases…" But the report – biased against bakers
– quoted a female vendor contradicting this claim by stating that
she did not blame Lobels (for the increase in the bread price) but
simply wanted the situation to be resolved.
In addition, the
vox pop, like most carried on ZTV, did not detail the geographical
extent of its interviews. In this instance, the station narrowly
interviewed people at a selected location in Harare, whose opinion
it then unprofessionally projected as representing national sentiment.
Notably, the broadcaster
has bureaux all over the country, which it seems to use only when
reporting commemorations of national events such as the Heroes’
and Independence days.
Lack of follow-ups
to important news
ZTV’s preoccupation
with officialdom at the expense of dealing with the broader picture
also meant that they ignored following up on important national events
or official promises that it would have previously reported. For example,
ZTV (18/10,8pm) quoted Transport Minister Christopher Mushowe urging
"non-performing parastatals to take a leaf from the National
Railways of Zimbabwe, which was on the verge of collapse but is now
on the road to recovery".
The report did
not measure the alleged revival considering that the same parastatal
has been reported to be facing serious operational problems, characterised
by crumbling infrastructure, a factor identified as being responsible
for some of the fatal train accidents that have since claimed scores
of lives in the past. For example, it did not question the fate
of the Dibangombe train disaster report whose findings the authorities
have refused to release. Moreover, while the station covered the
arrests of ZCTU
leaders following their foiled demonstration in September, it
did not follow up on the trial of the labour leaders. This was only
reported in the private media (SW Radio Africa 18/10).
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