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Economic decline
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2007-21
Monday May 28th 2007 - Sunday June 3rd 2007
June 07, 2007

THE government media continued to give a distorted picture of the country's economic situation during the week under review. For example, none of the 76 stories they carried on the subject (ZBC [26] and government Press [50]) coherently discussed the country's economic ills and their causes. Rather, they were disjointed reports that either masked government's culpability or presented it as working tirelessly to halt the economic decline. In fact, 30% of the 50 stories the government Press carried on the matter narrowly presented the appointment of the National Incomes and Pricing Commission and the signing of the social contract as a reflection of the authorities' commitment to revive the economy. The rest were piecemeal reports on indicators of economic distress.

The Herald and Chronicle (29/5), for example, passively reported Industry Minister Obert Mpofu claiming that the establishment of the commission was a "landmark" move "in the development of Zimbabwe's economy (and) curbing . . . the increasingly widening inequalities in society". He was not asked how exactly the commission would achieve this. Neither did The Herald (31/5) analyse the effects of the commission's powers to "regulate fees and prices" in all sectors of the economy, particularly in light of commodity shortages caused by government's price controls in the past. Nor did it openly discuss the root causes of price hikes.

Instead, The Herald (30/5) simply portrayed the increases as driven by "greed" and profiteering.

ZTV (31/5, 7am) adopted a similar slant and passively reported "analysts and ordinary people" as having welcomed the pricing commission as a solution to "ad hoc price increases and distortions" without discussing the macro-economic conditions that have caused them. The station (1/6, 8pm) and the official dailies (2/6) also unquestioningly projected the signing of the "social contract" by government, business and labour as a "landmark demonstration of unity of purpose in stabilizing the economy" without assessing its potential effectiveness. For instance, they did not test the practicability of government's forecasts that the contract would reduce inflation from the current 3,700% to 25% by year-end and thereby "significantly improve" the "livelihood of the majority" within "the next few months". Neither did The Sunday Mail (3/6) reconcile these claims with projections by its columnist, Brains Muchemwa, that inflation may reach 24,000% by December due to, among other factors, high food import costs and expenditure on election preparations.

The official media's unwillingness to frankly discuss the country's economic woes was also apparent in the 45 stories they carried on indicators of economic decay such as commodity price increases and shortages. All their reports simply highlighted the problems in isolation of government's policies. It was against this background that the Chronicle (29/5) merely revealed that civil servants in Binga were "absconding from duty to spend several hours fishing in the Zambezi river" to "augment (their) meagre salaries" without interpreting this as illustrative of government's failed policies.

Although the government papers' sourcing pattern appeared diverse as shown in Fig 1, they remained uncritical.

Fig.1 Voice distribution in the government Press

In contrast, the private media were forthright in the 38 stories they carried on the topic (private Press [29] and private electronic media [9]). Not only did they categorically link symptoms of the country's economic problems to government mismanagement, they also questioned the prudence of its interventionist policies. The Financial Gazette (31/5), for example, dismissed the effectiveness of the pricing commission saying "there won't be any respite for the suffering masses" for as long as it "skirts around issues at the heart of industry" such as "chronic foreign currency shortages, hyperinflation, crippling production costs and the exchange rate, which renders exports uncompetitive".

The Zimbabwe Independent (1/6) also viewed government's plans to force companies to cede 51% of their shares to "indigenous" Zimbabweans as part of the authorities' "populist programmes" that would not benefit the economy but "enrich (government) cronies". SW Radio Africa (28/5) and The Standard (3/6) reported economists making similar arguments.

The private media also carried several stories on symptoms of the country's economic ills. These comprised commodity shortages, price increases and the health workers' strike, which the government media ignored.

The private media's open coverage of the matter was mirrored by the private papers' attempts to balance the government perspective with comments from those outside the official circle. See Fig 2.

Fig.2 Voice in the private Press

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