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Poor news management
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2007-20
Monday May 21st 2007 - Sunday May 27th 2007
May 30, 2007

THOSE who only rely on ZBC for news were again left in the dark about the country's political and socio-economic "challenges" as the sole broadcaster preferred giving prominence to bland official statements that did not reflect the existence of the crisis.

This only appeared in the niche market private electronic media.

Radio Zimbabwe (21/5, 6am) provided a good example of such poor news prioritization.

The station chose to lead with repeats of the previous night's announcements on the death of President Mugabe's brother, Donato, and the postponement of a Cabinet meeting ahead of Harare's worsening water crisis and the lack of a television and radio signal in some parts of Matabeleland South. Worse still, no effort was made to link these problems to the general collapse in the country's infrastructure and its root causes.

Rather, that same evening ZTV (21/5, 8pm) still led with two follow-up reports on Donato's death while burying revelations of the chaos surrounding preparations for 'O' and 'A' level examinations scheduled for June.

Without openly discussing the reasons behind the problems affecting schools examinations or viewing them as an indication of the crisis now characterizing the country's education system, the station passively reported Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere papering over the matter. He told the station that although hyperinflation was negatively affecting his ministry's administration of exams, government would not raise its sub-economic examination fees. He did not explain why nor was he asked to.

Spot FM (21/5, 6pm) also subordinated the examinations chaos to an announcement on President Mugabe's departure to Kenya for the Comesa summit.

Subsequently, ZTV and Spot FM (24/5, 6&8pm) carried as top story a mundane event report on the annual Africa Day Symposium held at the University of Zimbabwe instead of the police extension of the ban on political rallies and public demonstrations in Harare.

Apart from its poor news prioritisation, ZBC also misinformed the public on important issues such as the country's food security situation.

ZTV (24/5,6pm) and Spot FM (25/5, 8am), for example, passively reported Secretary for Agriculture Shadreck Mlambo claiming that 30% of the 76,000 hectares targeted for winter wheat had so far been planted, contradicting recent parliamentary revelations that only 10% of the targeted winter wheat crop had been planted. And while they reported Mlambo claiming that the remaining hectarage would be prepared by May 31, they did not reconcile this with a parliamentary report that dismissed this as impossible due to acute shortages of fuel, draught power and farming implements.

Neither did Spot FM (22/5,1pm) link its report that NGOs were distributing food aid to starving communities with private media revelations that government had barred aid organizations from doing so to "prevent (them) from campaigning for the opposition ahead of next year's elections" (Zimbabwe Times 22/5). Spot FM (21/5, 1pm) also misrepresented the reasons behind the MDC's boycott of the Zaka East parliamentary by-election scheduled for June 9 in an effort to portray the opposition party as "running scared".

No comment was sought from the party itself. And although it reported on the participation of smaller opposition parties like the United People's Party and Zimbabwe People's Democratic Party (ZPDP), it did not provide useful information on their candidates or their manifestos. Instead, it only quoted three ZANU PF officials predicting victory for the ruling party. It was left to the private electronic media to highlight the MDC's position and profile other contesting opposition parties. For instance, the Zimbabwe Times (14/5) last week reported unnamed ruling party sources claiming that ZANU PF "hurriedly formed " the little known ZPDP after learning that all known opposition political parties would boycott the polls.

However, no corroboration was sought from the ruling party or the ZPDP.

The agency had earlier (11/5) reported MDC spokesmen explaining their factions' reasons for boycotting the election. Besides citing the uneven electoral playing field, they argued that there was little point in fielding a candidate in view of next year's elections.

Its coverage of the by-election reflected the candid manner in which the private electronic media handled various topics relating to the country's worsening crisis.

These comprised growing labour unrest in the civil service and the private sector due to poor salaries; the record drop in gold production; the illegal export of sugar by army chiefs; problems in the cotton industry; the continued clampdown on government opponents and its widespread condemnation.

ZBC censored most of these issues thereby giving its audiences a distorted picture of the situation in the country.

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