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Zim paper could get licence
News 24 (SA)
October 30, 2007

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Zimbabwe/0,,2-11-1662_2212107,00.html

Harare - Zimbabwean authorities are to consider an application by a popular daily newspaper to resume publication four years after it was banned.

Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu told a news conference on Tuesday that the government had decided to revive a regulator with responsibility for issuing licences to media houses. The body would immediately consider an application by The Daily News and its sister paper The Daily News on Sunday.

"The government has decided to reconstitute the Media and Information Commission (MIC)," Ndlovu told reporters in Harare.

He said the appointment of the new board followed a high court judgment which ruled that the MIC board be reconstituted to deal impartially with the application for the registration of the papers.

Enjoyed higher circulation than The Herald

Once the country's best-selling paper, the Daily News was shut down in 2003 for breaching the country's tough media laws by operating without a licence from the MIC.

In its heyday, the paper had a circulation of 150 000 and enjoyed a far high circulation than the government mouthpiece The Herald.

The MIC has twice refused to grant ANZ a licence despite a Supreme Court ruling in March 2005 that threw out the ban on the newspaper.

President Robert Mugabe signed a media law in 2002 which effectively barred foreign correspondents from Zimbabwe and forced all local journalists to seek accreditation.

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