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Daily Media Update No.26
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
April 14, 2008

Post election focus
Frightening new levels of disinformation and distortion featured in the two government-controlled dailies this morning, reinforcing the impression that they are not just biased in favour of ZANU PF but are actually used as conduits by the embattled authorities to misinform the public.

While both The Herald and the Chronicle led their papers with Sunday's news that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission would conduct a recount of the parliamentary and presidential votes in 23 constituencies despite a High Court ruling barring it from doing so, their main feature was an obviously fraudulent story claiming to have unearthed details about how the MDC (Tsvangirai) faction had rigged the election by bribing election officials.

Both papers also distorted the essence of the communiqué issued at the end of a 12-hour emergency SADC summit in Lusaka on Saturday. While The Herald claimed that SADC leaders had "accepted the explanation of government . . . regarding the release of the (presidential) elections," without providing either the evidence for this or its explanation, the Chronicle at least noted that the leaders had "urged ZEC to release the results of the presidential election" in the third paragraph of its story, which focused on a SADC pledge to send an observer team to witness the recounting of ballots in the 23 constituencies. The Herald buried news of SADC's appeal to ZEC to release the presidential election results "expeditiously" to the inside page turn to its front page story.

Between them, the two dailies carried 14 stories on Zimbabwe's post-election crisis, although none of them viewed it as such

The Zimbabwean on Sunday, which only reached the streets today (Monday), was more revealing about the crisis, the authorities' plans to create conditions favourable to ZANU PF in the run-off election they are planning, and concerns by the international community over the delay in releasing the presidential election results. The paper carried 33 stories on these issues.

The Herald and Chronicle unquestionly reported ZEC's decision to go ahead with the recounting of presidential and House of Assembly election results in 23 constituencies on April 19 "regardless of parallel court procedures that might be instituted by any party". The Herald quoted ZEC chief elections officer, Utoile Silaigwana, insisting that "it is within our mandate . . . to do the recounts and they would proceed . . . "

Neither of the papers provided any information about Friday's High Court ruling, but reported Silaigwana saying, by way of dismissal, that ZEC had "not seen the order barring us from conducting the recounts, so the process would proceed as advised." The papers made no effort to seek independent expert opinion about this evident conflict between a judicial order and ZEC's decision.

The story in the two dailies claiming to expose how the MDC rigged the March elections joins others the papers have published recently that bear the hallmarks of deliberately concocted disinformation propaganda material inserted to discredit the MDC and provide a justification for the recounting of votes.

The Herald's front-page story, Document exposes alleged MDC-T ballot bribery, was based solely on what the papers claimed to be "a party internal document penned by the party's secretary-general, Tendai Biti" and "circulating widely in Zimbabwe". But they made no attempt to exercise the very first law of basic journalistic practice by verifying the source of their story, in this case with Biti, or even the MDC. Instead, they published unsubstantiated and damaging allegations from the document which, they said revealed that the MDC had allegedly rigged the elections by bribing teachers and civil servants recruited by ZEC as election officers "with amounts ranging between $3 billion and $50 billion" in order "to overstate our votes". According to the story the document also reveals "that MDC-T worked in cahoots with the Zimbabwe Election Support Network to observe the elections" and that this would take the MDC's "campaign right inside the polling stations and position us at substantial strategic advantage to even compromise the secrecy of the ballot in our favour''.

The Herald also carried the full text of the document over the two pages of its Opinion and Analysis section, which included an introduction describing the document as an "MDC strategy to compromise elections and the extent to which they planned to mortgage Zimbabwe to their allies in return for the funding they were promised."
To illustrate this point the paper ran the following statement allegedly written by Biti: "Our partners, in particular the Australian, the British and American governments, are united in their determination to have Mugabe arrested and handed over to The Hague as soon as possible to face trial for crimes against humanity . . . "

MMPZ believes the publication of this unsubstantiated, dangerous and inflammatory article to be a deliberate and deceitful attempt to incite hatred and disaffection against a legitimate political party contesting elections and constitutes a reprehensible abuse of the media to instigate instability and confusion among the electorate.

The papers also portrayed voices critical of ZEC's delay in announcing the presidential election results as also being part of a conspiracy. For instance, the paper carried a cartoon showing Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa as working with Britain and the MDC to pressure ZEC into releasing the results.

Fortunately, for readers determined to find an alternative opinion, The Zimbabwean on Sunday quoted the MDC's Tendai Biti dismissing the government-controlled dailies' allegations of MDC rigging saying "the regime is desperate and is now putting out fake documents as MDC papers" adding that "it is quite clear Zanu PF is desperate to reverse the people's decision on the March 29" elections. The paper also carried an analysis dismissing other alleged conspiracies aimed at discrediting the MDC and published in the government-controlled press. In an opinion piece by Levi Mhaka headlined "Watch out for the lies", the writer argues, "The Herald has failed to subject many of its political stories using journalistic standards of truthfulness, accuracy, balance and fairness."

The lead story in The Zimbabwean on Sunday reported MDC's plans to stage mass action protests to compel ZEC to publish the presidential election results and quoted its spokesman, Nelson Chamisa, saying the party's National Executive had resolved to "involve people in expressing disappointment over the arrogance of this regime in not releasing the results . . . and illegally extending their term of office." The paper also quoted analyst, John Makumbe saying the "failure by the regional and international community to rein in Mugabe meant that Zimbabweans had to find their own solutions to the problem confronting them.

The privately owned paper also carried six stories from various regional bodies calling for the release of the presidential results, among them one from the African National Congress. It also reported three incidents of politically motivated violence and growing fears of a violent campaign against the electorate leading up to any presidential election run-off.

Fig 1 and 2 illustrates the sourcing pattern in the government-controlled press and The Zimbabwean on Sunday.

Fig 1: Voice distribution in The Herald and Chronicle

Fig 2: Voice distribution in The Zimbabwean on Sunday

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