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Media election coverage
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2008-6
February 11th - Sunday February 17th 2008
February 21, 2008

The official media continued to give widespread and positive publicity to ZANU-PF's electoral preparations as compared to other parties. Neither did they improve their coverage of administrative electoral matters, which remained piecemeal; nor showed any efforts to report cases of politically motivated violence and electoral malpractice.

This was reflected in the 216 reports they carried on the topic: ZBC [160] and government papers [56]. Only the private media investigated Zimbabwe's controversial electoral system in 116 reports. Of these 67 appeared in the private electronic media and 49 in the private Press.

Political Rallies/Campaigns
In the week, the government media relentlessly promoted ZANU-PF's campaign activities. For example, of the 93 reports ZBC carried on the matter, 72 were on the ruling party, MDC (seven), 11 on independent presidential hopeful Simba Makoni and other parties (three). This imbalance was more pronounced on ZTV. It devoted 53 minutes to ZANU-PF as compared to nearly four minutes allocated to MDC and less than two minutes to other political parties. ZTV (12/2, 8pm) appeared to justify this inequitable coverage by mentioning in passing that under the SADC principles and guidelines governing the conduct of democratic elections, the national broadcaster was only "obliged to open up its airwaves a month before elections".

The official papers adopted the same attitude. They buried the opposition's electoral preparations in ZANU-PF's campaign stories. The Herald (15/2), for instance, simply reported the activities of the MDC and ZANU Ndonga as appendages to its report, ZANU-PF names candidates. The only times that the Tsvangirai-led MDC and Makoni, received prominence in the government media was when they were being presented negatively or seemingly at each other's throats. For example, The Herald and Chronicle (11/2) only gave the Tsvangirai-led MDC front-page status in the context of its disassociation with Makoni.

ZANU-PF however, unfailingly received approving coverage of its activities, even in undeserved cases. For example, The Herald's ZANU-PF reruns complete, says Manyika (11/2) failed to categorically report on the fierce divisions in the ruling party over the way it had conducted its primaries. The paper simply limited itself to regurgitating official pronouncements papering over these problems. ZBC followed suit with Radio Zimbabwe (12/2, 6am) failing to investigate irregularities in the ZANU-PF Gutu South primary elections which resulted in the party's provincial commissar Lovemore Matuke allegedly "disappearing with the ballot papers" before eventually announcing Shuvai Mahofa as the winner.

Only the private electronic media accorded all the contesting parties fair coverage in 69 reports: private electronic media (33) and private papers (36). Unlike the official media, they were categorical about the problems in ZANU-PF by exposing the levels of internal rifts and witch-hunts in the party following Makoni's revolt. For example, while The Financial Gazette (14/2) claimed that state security agents had placed Makoni under "24-hour surveillance" in a bid to "flush out ZANU-PF heavyweights" purportedly backing him, the Zimbabwe Independent (15/2) reported some ZANU-PF officials as having called for a "probe and possible expulsion" from the party of Politburo member Dumiso Dabengwa for his alleged links with Makoni and for "harbouring presidential ambitions". The Standard (17/2) revealed more ZANU-PF revolts when it reported that a number of party members, including Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi, had filed nomination papers to contest in the March general election despite having lost in the primaries, in open defiance of the party's presidium. The private media also covered the campaign activities of other parties such as the MDC and Makoni, and their attempts to form alliances ahead of the polls.

Administration
The official media continued to avoid investigating the authorities' ability to manage next month's elections adequately; the adequacy of its voter education campaign; irregularities at the nomination courts, or their capacity to handle thousands of nomination papers in a day. As in the previous weeks, they either buried these issues in ZANU-PF campaign activities or merely reproduced the electoral authorities' pronouncements without investigating them independently. For example, Spot FM (12/2, 8pm) and Radio Zimbabwe (13/2, 8am) simply announced the postponement of the sitting of the nomination courts from the 8th to the 15th of February 2008 without any accompanying information on the registration requirements. ZTV (15/2, 8pm) only reported these hours after official closure of the nomination courts.

Only the Chronicle (14/2) gave prominence to the news, carrying it as a lead, and highlighting the salient requirements of the exercise.

There was also precious little voter education information in the government media stressing the importance of transparent and accessible pre-election procedures, such as the delimitation process. Spot FM (13/2, 8pm), for example, simply recorded a ZEC official Shupikai Mashereni announcing that delimitation maps were "ready to be sent to provinces for public viewing", without asking him to justify the late release of such vital information. These reports formed part of the 55 stories the official media carried on the topic: ZBC [36] and government papers [19].

The private media belied the façade of smooth electoral preparations projected by the government media. They continued to subject Zimbabwe's flawed electoral system to critical analysis. Citing civic groups, the opposition party voices and foreign observers, they noted that the country's laws did not permit for free and fair elections. ZimOnline (13/2), for example, reported the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace calling for the dissolution of ZEC and "a new one be created in terms of the new law (18th Constitutional Amendment)" while the Independent gave a picture of total disorder in the way the country had so far organized the elections. It revealed how the recent voters' roll inspection and registration exercise had been marked by logistical problems and "lack of coordination" between ZEC and the Registrar-General's office. At the weekend, The Standard (17/2) announced that ZEC had barred local election watchdog ZESN from conducting voter education, a move the paper said might "result in the highest number of spoilt ballot papers since 1980" because of the complicated electoral process that will see the electorate vote for council, legislative, and presidential candidates at once. Although ZESN confirmed the ban, MMPZ has noticed that the media, including ZBC, have continued to flight ZESN's voter education adverts.

Political violence and vote buying
This week, the government media recorded two incidents of politically motivated violence stemming from intra-party rivalry in ZANU-PF during the party's primary elections. The Herald and Chronicle (14/2) carried a court report in which ruling party MP for Mwenezi, Isaiah Shumba and 12 party supporters were accused of "promoting public violence" by singing revolutionary songs and chanting ZANU-PF slogans denigrating the winner of the party's primaries in the newly created Mwenezi West constituency, Neddie Masukume. Earlier, ZTV (13/2, 8pm) buried news that ZANU-PF Chitungwiza South candidate Christopher Chigumba was arrested for "pointing a gun at his rival" at the tail end of a report in which police were warning the public against violence.

The private media carried four reports that recorded five incidents of politically motivated violence and other related rights violations. These included inter-party clashes between rival factions of the MDC and the in-house fights in ZANU-PF. The different manner in which the official media and the private electronic media handled the topic is shown by their sourcing patterns. See Figs 1, 2 and 3.

Fig 1: Voice distribution on ZBC

Fig 2: Voice distribution in the private electronic media

Fig 3: Voice distribution in the private Press

Other News
While the official media drowned their readers with elections; in particular ZANU-PF campaign activities, they ignored other crucial news like the country's worsening economic climate, poor service delivery and new cholera outbreaks. As a result, there was no attempt to examine the extent and impact of these ills on the country, or their causes. For example The Herald (15/2) and Chronicle (15/2) simply carried briefs in their business sections on the rise in the December inflation to 66,212 percent without question. They did not give details on the significance of the new figures or query their late release and its impact on Zimbabwe's economic planning.

Similarly, ZBC failed to do justice to the increase in inflation. ZTV (15/2, 8pm) suffocated the news in a report in which it reported analysts as having blamed the "half-hearted approach by stakeholders for the failure of Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono's monetary policy statements" (ZTV (15/2, 8pm). The government media paid scant attention to the cholera outbreaks in the country. The Herald (15/2), for instance, dwarfed the death of seven people to the water-borne disease in Mudzi and Mutoko with a story that reported Health Minister David Parirenyatwa narrowly attributing the decline by 30 percent of sanitation facilities in rural areas in the last eight years to the effects of Cyclone Eline and successive droughts "that eroded households' economic capacity". Nothing was said of government's culpability in the matter.

Instead, the paper cited Parirenyatwa saying that, "a woman who had visited Mozambique was suspected to have carried the disease to the village". These claims were not verified or linked to similar outbreaks in Muzarabani and Harare. All official radio stations censored the cholera outbreaks while ZTV (15/2, 6pm) only quoted Parirenyatwa's assurances that the affected people were "now receiving treatment" without saying when the disease broke out, its prevalence and its origins. The government papers' passive reporting was equally exposed by the way The Herald and Chronicle (15/2) failed to question the manner in which the Reserve Bank dedicated an entire 14-page supplement to demonstrate its 'innocence' in its dealings with Flatwater Investments, accused of violating exchange control regulations by engaging in illegal foreign currency dealing. For example, the papers did not independently investigate the RBZ's overkill response, details of its agreement with Flatwater or how the private company was expected to source the equipment. Figs 4 shows the government papers' poor sourcing patterns.

Fig 4. Voice distribution pattern in government Press

The private media did not fare much better in their 17 reports on these issues. Although the Zimbabwe Times and the Independent (15/2) and The Standard (17/2) carried three reports that interpreted the rise in the December inflation, they were reticent on the fresh outbreak of cholera and the RBZ's unprecedented attempt to exonerate itself.

The Financial Gazette (14/2) however, did publish revelations in a Health Ministry report submitted to a joint parliamentary committee on Local Government and Health that Harare's drinking was "unsafe and poses a danger to public health" but did not link this to the cholera outbreak in some parts of the capital. The paper also gave Gono the platform to rehash his 'innocence' claims without investigation or comment.

The private media's poor treatment of the topic was mirrored in its sourcing pattern. See Figs 5 and 6.

Fig 5: Voice distribution of the private electronic media

Fig 6: Voice distribution in the private Press

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