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Unequal access to the media in the lead up to the March 2008 elections
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2008-5
February 4th - Sunday February 10th 2008

MMPZ notes with concern that with little more than six weeks to go before national elections on March 29, Zimbabwe 's sole national public broadcaster, ZBC, continues to show no sign of adhering to domestic laws and regional guidelines requiring it to provide fair, balanced and equitable coverage of the political contestants. Nor has it attempted to investigate and publicize important voter information on the complicated electoral process. Its obligation to provide fair coverage appears in the Broadcasting Services Act, the Electoral Laws Amendment Act and the SADC principles and guidelines on the conduct of democratic elections.

However, in the week under review, ZTV devoted 37 minutes in its news bulletins of approving coverage to the ruling party, compared to a combined total of just four minutes for the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC and the newly formed Zimbabwe Development Party. Although new presidential hopeful, expelled ZANU PF Politburo member and former Finance Minister, Simba Makoni, received 18 minutes on ZTV's news bulletins, this was overwhelmingly dominated by reports chastising him for breaking ranks with the ruling party and challenging the party's presidential candidate, Robert Mugabe. Notably, none of the media regulatory bodies have taken issue with ZBC's inequitable use of public resources to champion the cause of one political party at the expense of others.

Only The Zimbabwean (7/2) reported the local election watchdog, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), criticizing the public broadcaster for its failure to establish and publicize clear guidelines providing equitable access to its facilities for the contesting parties.

The paper reported the civic organisation lamenting ZBC's failure to "set down any rules on direct access and political advertising, less that eight weeks" before the elections. ZESN chairman Noel Kututwa was reported urging ZBC to offer free airtime to all political parties to advertise their material "because it was a parastatal which survives on public funds". Notably, under amendments to the electoral laws, the Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) is obliged to draw up a code of conduct for the media for this election period and to ensure they adhere to this code, but it had still not done so at the time this report was being compiled. However, the Zimbabwe Independent (8/2) published a summary of internationally accepted standards on election reporting and promised its readers to "subscribe" to them.

It is also notable that, during the week, ZEC largely failed to provide the nation with important electoral information, particularly about voter registration and the inspection of the voters' roll. It left this job mainly to ZESN to publicize on ZBC's radio and television broadcasts. While it has been reported that ZEC has been conducting "house-to-house" voter education, there is no indication of how extensive this exercise is, nor has it apparently enlisted any of the media in its efforts to explain changes to constituency and ward boundaries, and how these will affect voters. Nor has it attempted to disseminate other important electoral information, such as the number and location of polling stations, that voters will need to cast their ballots effectively in Zimbabwe 's most complex electoral exercise.

Private civic organisations have been the only voices in disseminating educational voter information to the public. For example, of the 53 voter education advertisements monitored on ZTV in the week, none belonged to ZEC. These only came from private civic bodies, such as ZESN (22), the Women's Trust (28) and the Masvingo Constituency (three).

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