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Daily Media Update 52
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
June 26, 2008

[The Financial Gazette was not available on the streets or online at the time MMPZ completed this report]

Election focus
The government controlled-papers, The Herald and Chronicle (26/6) continued to misreport growing regional and international concern over the government's insistence that it would go ahead with tomorrow's controversial presidential election run-off despite universal advice to postpone the vote.

The papers made no attempt to query the legitimacy of the election, or investigate the validity of the reasons why the MDC had withdrawn from it.

This was reflected in all 19 reports that the papers published on electoral issues. Six of these were on poll management, party campaigns (7), and political violence (6).

Administrative issues
The Herald and Chronicle either ignored or distorted mounting international pressure on Harare to postpone Friday's run-off until the political and electoral environment in the country was conducive for the poll.

They dishonestly attempted to discredit Wednesday's resolution by the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security (the so-called Troika) advising the authorities to defer the run-off, by claiming that its chair, Angola, and South African President and mediator in the Zimbabwe crisis, Thabo Mbeki, had "boycotted" the summit. The papers quoted an unnamed government official "well-versed" in the operations of SADC saying the organ's resolution had "no force" as a result of the boycott. He said that because only the leaders of two countries had attended the meeting, Tanzania and Swaziland, it had been reduced to a "bilateral" exercise and that those attending were "only expressing an obligation to the Western world". The papers deliberately omitted the fact that Angola had sent a presidential representative, and they continued to censor earlier comments by the Angolan president himself, Eduardo dos Santos, criticizing the pervasive violence of Zimbabwe's election campaign and calling for tolerance and dialogue between the contestants.

Instead, The Herald and Chronicle resorted to unsubstantiated conspiracy theories to undermine SADC's authority and the region's concerns over the Zimbabwe crisis. They achieved this by finding unnamed "political analysts" urging SADC to "stand by Mugabe since there were concerted efforts by Britain and America to divide the regional grouping and give space to their regime change agenda". But no evidence for this was provided.

The Herald and Chronicle also continued to present preparations for the polls as proceeding smoothly despite the MDC's withdrawal and international criticism of the government over its intention to go ahead with the election. They approvingly reported the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission as having "unanimously agreed" to proceed with the election, quoting ZEC chairman George Chiweshe saying that the decision to withdraw by MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai had "no legal force or effect since it was filed out of time". The papers passively reported Chiweshe saying the electoral law stipulates the period during which a candidate must file a withdrawal letter, but provided no clarification. Instead, The Herald and Chronicle attempted to discredit the MDC decision by selectively quoting analysts claiming that Tsvangirai's withdrawal was unconstitutional. For example, they approvingly reported constitutional law expert Lovemore Madhuku saying the MDC leader "cannot pull out of the run-off now" because "candidature for the run-off or second election is not a voluntary exercise; you give your consent when you contest the first election".

Parties' campaigns
The government Press published eight stories on party campaign activities, all favouring ZANU PF. But these were mostly based on senior ZANU PF officials maliciously attacking the MDC and its leader. They repeatedly portrayed the opposition as "Western puppets" bent on reversing the gains of independence without providing a shred of evidence. The papers' editorials were cut from the same cloth. The Herald's political editor Caesar Zvayi, for example, claimed that by seeking refuge at the Dutch Embassy, Tsvangirai had shown himself to be "a childish, shameless Western stooge". Zvayi would have rather seen Tsvangirai seek safety at an African embassy nearer to his home. The puerile level of this diatribe gained in status when Zvayi resorted to insults about Tsvangirai's "potholed" demeanour and derided him for "leaving the comfort of his wife Susan's arms in this wintry weather to spend night(s) on a cold couch at the Dutch Embassy, claiming he fears for his life". Meanwhile, the news pages of the papers were dominated again by Mugabe addressing rallies in Mashonaland Central where he warned the West against "commenting on Zimbabwe issues because the country is no longer under colonial rule".

Political violence
The Herald and Chronicle continued to ignore widespread reports in the private electronic media and the international press of the continuing campaign of state-sponsored violence against opposition supporters and ordinary civilians around the country. Since this cruel and brutal assault on Zimbabwe's civilian population didn't exist in their minds, the papers had difficulty in reporting any of the growing chorus of regional and international outrage over the violence. Instead, their six reports, which included three new incidents, remained focused on exclusively blaming the MDC for the violence. For example, the two dailies published the arrest of another newly elected MDC-T official, the senator for Siyakobvu in Kariba, for "masterminding" violence against ruling party supporters in the area. Their stories unfailingly inserted their own editorial comments accusing the MDC of "unleashing" violence throughout the country since the March elections, "targeting" war veterans and senior ZANU PF officials "in their quest to erase the country's history and effect a regime change". No evidence was provided to support these crassly fabricated claims. The same report quoted police confirming the arrest of another MDC official in Hurungwe for allegedly "storming ZANU PF offices in Karoi and beating up three employees", while the Chronicle reported that suspected MDC-T "thugs" burnt polling stations in Zvishavane and Gweru "in a desperate attempt to discredit tomorrow's run-off". As usual, no comment was sought from the MDC.

MMPZ notes that the first law of a propagandist's handbook is to accuse your accusers of the crimes you are being accused of committing - and to be even more virulent in making the claims. Evidently, those masterminding the propaganda war against the MDC in the government-controlled media are well aware of this tactic - which becomes even more effective once the police and other security agencies have been recruited to provide "official" information to support the claims. Once again MMPZ is obliged to point out that this strategy was effectively employed by the media managers of Rwanda's official Radio Milles de Collines, which played a crucial role in fanning the flames of ethnic hatred that led to the 1994 genocide in that country. In Zimbabwe today, the government-controlled media are clearly being used to incite hatred and intolerance of a legitimate political party. Those in control of Zimbabwe's official media need to be reminded that their conduct is contributing towards creating an environment conducive to a repetition of the Rwandan catastrophe in Zimbabwe.

Fig 1 shows the sourcing patterns in the government dailies.

Fig 1: Voice distribution in The Herald and Chronicle

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