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Price blitz follow-up
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2007-32
Monday August 13th 2007 - Sunday August 19th 2007
August 23, 2007

The government media continued to display their professional ineptitude in covering the on-going crackdown on prices. Almost all the 64 stories they devoted to the topic (official Press [42] and ZBC [22]) simply restricted themselves to reproducing official pronouncements on the alleged success of the crackdown and evaded examining the inherent defects of the exercise, which has resulted in unprecedented commodity shortages. As a result, the government media subordinated industry's views on the crackdown to government statements that either papered over the negative effects of the blitz or projected business as being to blame for the country's economic woes. Government's culpability in the economic mess - characterised by inconsistent policies - was never probed.

As a result, there was no attempt to question government's sudden reversal of several of its price-controlling proclamations, ranging from the nullification of state monopolies in fuel and meat supplies to approving increases in commodity prices. Neither did they view these developments as a reflection of the chaos surrounding government's implementation of the exercise. Otherwise, they simply presented the arrest of about 7,500 business people as being one of the indicators of the alleged success of the clampdown, without giving a clear breakdown on how many of them had been convicted or acquitted and reasons for their acquittal.

The Sunday Mail (19/8) however, did expose some of the shortcomings of the price blitz when it featured a number of consumers and business people questioning the viability of government-sanctioned commodity price increases.

The government media's superficial coverage of the subject was again mirrored by their dependence on official voices as shown by the official papers' sourcing pattern (Fig 5).

Fig 5 Voice distribution in the government Press

In contrast, the private media maintained their critical slant in handling the crackdown, as they continued to highlight its negative effects, which they noted would worsen unless government changed course. The private Press featured 12 reports on the topic, while the private electronic media carried nine. For example, SW Radio Africa (16/8) used a Chronicle report on the death of two people in a stampede for sugar in Bulawayo to highlight the intensity and adverse effects of the shortages. New Zimbabwe.com (16/8) carried a similar report.

Besides the negative ramifications of the blitz on business and the public, the private media also exposed how it had seriously eroded government revenue. The Independent, for example, revealed that the state had "become the latest casualty" of the exercise after a recent government study showed that the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority was set to lose $13,1 trillion in potential tax revenue this year. The paper also carried "startling revelations" from the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry president Callisto Jokonya - first carried in the New African magazine - blaming government for the "wave of price increases". Reportedly, Jokonya accused government of "pushing up the parallel market rates" by "buying more than US$100 million on the parallel market to pay foreign debts for troubled power utility Zesa Holdings and state airline Air Zimbabwe" in June this year, adding that industry had "proof" of this.

The private media's critical approach was illustrated by the private papers' balanced sourcing pattern as captured in Fig 6.

Fig. 6 Voice distribution in the Private Press

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