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Economic decay
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Weekly Media Update 2007-3
Monday January 22nd 2007 – Sunday January 28th 2007

THE media published 169 stories on Zimbabwe’s crisis-ridden economy.

ZBC carried 56 reports, the government Press 51, while private papers carried 48 stories and the private electronic media 14.

The reports highlighted commodity shortages, the runaway cost of living and increased labour unrest. However, all the media failed to give a holistic picture on the commodity price hikes, which they only covered randomly.

The government media especially, carried the increases – such as that of sugar – as mere announcements and avoided discussing them in the context of government’s failed interventionist economic policies.

However, in a rare display of unison, all the media’s 30 previews on the monetary policy statement (official media [19] and private media [11]) agreed that central bank governor Gideon Gono faced a mammoth task in reviving the economy and called on him to devalue the local currency.

In fact, ZBC went further by carrying reports that quoted property experts, importers and stock exchange officials expressing displeasure at the delays by the Reserve Bank to present the monetary policy, saying it was hurting business and fuelling speculative behaviour.

But that is where the similarities ended. While the government media dodged exploring the root causes of the economic crisis, the private media squarely blamed the authorities.

For example, although the government media reported on an announcement by national power utility ZESA that it was broke and warned consumers of worse power cuts to come, they did not view the disclosures as an indication of government’s bad corporate governance. Instead, these media unquestioningly allowed the authorities to blame those outside the official circle for the problem.

The private media were not docile. For example, the Zimbabwe Independent alone carried six opinion pieces that projected a gloomy picture of the country’s economic future unless government adopted effective policies.

For instance, its columnist Eric Bloch argued that the "near-total demise of the economy is almost wholly due to government policies and economic mismanagement".

His sentiments reflected the tone of the stories the private media featured diagnosing the country’s economic ills.

Their critical approach was reflected by the amount of space they gave to independent comment as shown by the private papers’ sourcing pattern in Fig 1.

Fig. 1 Voice distribution in the private Press

In contrast, government papers as shown in Fig 2, basically viewed the problems from the authorities’ perspective.

Fig. 2 Voice distribution in government papers

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