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Agriculture
Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2007-23
Monday June 11th 2007 - Sunday June 17th 2007
June 21, 2007
THIS week ZBC
glowingly reported on government's buying of agricultural
equipment from China, which they presented as a panacea to Zimbabwe's
farming woes. So enchanted with the development was the broadcaster
that it devoted 24 of the 51 stories it carried on agriculture to
the issue. ZTV alone devoted 35 minutes (54%) of the 65 minutes
it allocated to agricultural news in the week to celebrating the
acquisition. And ZBC stations aired live the almost two-hour official
presentation of the farming equipment on Monday (11/6). Subsequently,
they carried excerpts of official speeches at the event as headline
news for most of the week.
However, this
did not translate into an informed analysis of the matter.
For example,
there were no attempts to investigate whether the acquisition of
the 925 tractors against a national requirement of 50,000 was enough
to boost agricultural production. Moreover, it did not link the
latest acquisition to previous agricultural deals, whose fate remains
hazy. Although Radio Zimbabwe (18/6, 8pm) revealed that despite
these acquisitions, the country still remained unable to meet its
food needs, it did not take government to task over the matter.
ZBC also did
not query the confusion surrounding the criteria used to distribute
the machinery, which saw some opposition MDC leaders - some
of whom are not farmers - being selected as beneficiaries
(ZTV 12/6, 8pm and Radio Zimbabwe 13/6, 6am).
For instance,
while Spot FM (11/6, 8pm) reported Gono defending the criteria used
to select the beneficiaries, saying it was based on "proven
productivity", ZTV (12/6, 8pm) and Radio Zimbabwe (13/6, 6am)
reported MDC officials questioning the logic behind the move, especially
when some of its officials were given the equipment ahead of deserving
cases. However, instead of clarifying these claims, ZTV (12/6,8pm)
merely used the opportunity to attack the MDC MPs as "retrogressive"
because they were refusing to accept the tractors.
The broadcaster's
lopsided coverage of the matter was mirrored in its over reliance
on government and ruling party officials (See Fig 6).
Fig. 6 Voice
Distribution in the public media
| Zanu PF |
MDC |
Govt |
Farmer |
| 9 |
6 |
24 |
2 |
The five stories
carried by the private electronic media on the distribution of the
agricultural equipment were mainly premised on the MDC leadership's
dismissal of the matter as "cheap (political) propaganda"
meant to sanitize ZANU PF and the MDC relations in light of Mbeki's
the mediation efforts.
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fact
sheet
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