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Rights
violations
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from
Weekly Media Update 2006-47
Monday November 20th 2006 - Sunday November 26th 2006
THE private media
continued to pay attention to rights violations in the country.
This week they carried 14 stories on rights abuses and recorded
seven new incidents. These included the arrest of university students,
members of the public and farmers, harassment of civic bodies and
retribution against MDC supporters suspected of voting for the opposition
in the October rural district council elections.
All the stories
presented state security agents and ZANU PF activists as the perpetrators.
However, the private radio stations largely failed to balance the
victims’ allegations with official comment.
For example, SW
Radio Africa (23/11) reported the MDC claiming that its supporters
in most parts of rural Masvingo had "fled their homes
and sought refuge in Masvingo town following threats to their lives
by ZANU PF supporters and traditional chiefs".
Reportedly, the
ruling party activists were "spearheading the campaign
to get rid of all MDC elements" in some parts of the
province and forcing opposition supporters to "pay $2000
fines" for attending MDC rallies. No comment was sought
from the police nor was there any indication that the station had
tried to do so.
Although the private
electronic media are operating under extremely difficult conditions,
their persistent failure to indicate that they have tried to corroborate
such claims or to obtain official comment damages the credibility
of their reports that rely on a single source, especially an interested
party.
The government
media simply ignored the abuses, which of course, constitutes a
total dereliction of their professional duty to inform their audiences.
In fact, the media’s
inadequate coverage of topical issues was reflected by their failure
to fully inform their audiences on the developments at the African
Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) and the ACP-EU meetings
during the week.
Except for the
three stories the niche market private electronic media featured,
the rest of the mainstream media ignored these important events
in which the country’s deteriorating human rights situation came
under scrutiny.
Even then, the
private electronic media’s treatment of these issues was misleading.
New Zimbabwe.com
(22/11), for example, erroneously reported that Zimbabwe’s long-delayed
periodic report to ACHPR’s 40th session had been "snubbed".
This was false because it was not on the agenda and therefore
not subject to discussion. In fact, the commission acknowledged
receipt of the report and filed it for future consideration.
The media’s failure
to accurately cover such contemporary issues reflects the level
of ineptitude that exists in Zimbabwe’s media services today, while
the failure to report breaking stories indicates a lack of urgency
in the newsrooms of these organisations that appears to have developed
as a result of a lack of journalistic competition in the country’s
devastated media landscape. In the case of the government-controlled
media however, it is not just professional laziness that sees them
omitting important news from their bulletins and newspapers, but
a wilful act of suppression, especially in respect of stories that
reflect badly on the government or the ruling party.
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