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Online agencies disregarding elementary journalistic standards
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2000 – 4
Monday January 29th 2007 – Sunday February 4th 2007

Although the foreign-based media and online agencies have become vital sources of alternative information to some Zimbabweans, they often compromise their credibility by disregarding elementary journalistic standards.

New Zimbabwe.com’s story (2/2), Mugabe’s guards in open rebellion, is a case in point.

The agency alleged that 23 soldiers "attached to the Presidential Guard (PG)" were "arrested and detained after they sprayed" the State House "with bullets" on January 29th protesting against low salaries.

Reportedly, the arrest of the soldiers – "all of them graduates from the Border Gezi National Youth Service" – followed an earlier shooting to death of 30 horses by other "50 (PG) soldiers" at Inkomo Barracks who then "disappeared with an assortment of AK 47 assault and FN rifles".

Except for Defence Minister Sydney Sekeremayi who refused to comment on the matter on the basis that he does "not talk to the media", the story relied on unnamed sources and lacked any evidence to substantiate its extraordinary claims.

In another case, Studio 7 (1/2) simply quoted an official from the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC faction claiming that about 3,000 Bulawayo residents participated in the party’s demonstration against the synchronisation of elections in 2010. The station allowed these inflated figures to pass as fact without any effort to seek independent corroboration.

The Zimbabwean (1/2) also passively reported unnamed sources claiming – without a shred of evidence – that the doctors’ strike had resulted in the death of 60,000 people in six weeks. How they arrived at this figure was simply ignored.

These media are fortunate they operate outside the repressive media laws that suffocate free expression in Zimbabwe, but it should not be an excuse to abandon basic journalistic standards of providing credible - and where possible – identifiable sources for the information they disseminate. Publishing stories without any attempt to provide credible verification of the source for the information conveyed reduces the quality of that information to rumour and speculation - and damages the authority and credibility of the media organisation responsible for disseminating it. Information that cannot be reasonably corroborated should not, generally, see the light of day.

It is regrettable that such unprofessional journalism provides the authorities with an excuse to retain their repressive media laws, which they have used to muzzle the private media and stifle the establishment of alternative sources of news.

Despite these professional lapses however, the private radio stations and online agencies have continued to expose the country’s deteriorating human rights situation.

This week they carried 14 stories on rights violations. Of these, eight were new incidents while the remainder were either follow-ups of previous cases, or general discussions on the country’s poor human rights record.

The incidents included the arrest of MDC supporters, civic activists and striking nurses and the harassment of teachers’ representatives by security agents.

The government media ignored most of the cases, only reported on the arrest of four nurses over allegations that they tried to incite their colleagues to join the health workers’ strike.

Even then, they treated the matter as normal.

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