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The government and private press
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 3/2009
Monday January 19th - Sunday January 25th January
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
January 30, 2009

The ongoing sharing power dispute between ZANU PF and the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC formation; Zimbabwe's steep economic decline; and the belated 2009 budget presentation were the major highlights of the week. See Fig. 1.

Fig 1: Topical news distribution in the Press

The government papers intensified their propaganda blitz against the MDC (Tsvangirai) after SADC, once again, failed to break the power-sharing deadlock between Zimbabwe's rival parties last Monday.

These papers exclusively blamed Tsvangirai and his party for the failure of the latest SADC intervention to resolve the impasse, while glossing over ZANU PF's culpability in the stalemate. For example, 35 of their 40 reports on the matter, 14 of which were editorials, accused Tsvangirai and his party of deliberately stalling the formation of the much-awaited inclusive government to appease their perceived Western handlers. Only five were neutral.

However, the papers did not provide any coherent evidence to substantiate their claims.

To make matters worse, they did not give the MDC-T a platform to express its position, preferring to use either ZANU PF or unnamed sources' version of events. For instance, The Herald's editorial (20/1) accused Tsvangirai of "bringing fresh demands to the table every time" and described them as not only "outrageous" but also "designed to sabotage the process". However, the editorial did not even mention what the MDC-T leader was demanding, or assess the validity of his concerns. And in its news stories the paper relied on ZANU PF and unnamed sources' accounts of the latest SADC meeting.

Earlier, the same paper's lead story passively allowed ZANU PF's chief negotiator Patrick Chinamasa to dismiss Tsvangirai's proposal to SADC leaders urging them to rescind President Mugabe's unilateral appointment of the Reserve Bank governor and the new Attorney-General on the basis that there was no consultation with MDC-T according to the terms of the MOU and the agreement signed between the parties in September. Chinamasa simply claimed that the demands were a "delaying tactic meant to frustrate the implementation of the agreement in line with instructions from his handlers and advice from God-knows-who".

The following day (21/1), The Herald sensationally claimed Tsvangirai was "under fire" for refusing to join the inclusive government despite the fact that the report was only based on the opinions of four sources namely; former information minister Jonathan Moyo, an unnamed analyst, and two ordinary people, all of whom echoed the official papers' sentiments.

Compounding this bias these papers allowed offensive and inflammatory language against the MDC-T to be expressed without censure.

For example, The Herald (22/1) quoted ZANU PF official Saviour Kasukuwere describing Tsvangirai as "a political comedian" whose "problem has something to do with his level of education".

The official papers' coverage of Zimbabwe's worsening economic and humanitarian crises was equally unprofessional.

They mostly portrayed the general situation as being under control owing to various government interventions such as the dollarization of the economy. The Herald (20/1), for example, passively announced government's plans to present the 2009 national budget on January 29, quoting analysts contending that they expected it to be denominated in hard currency "to reflect the economic fundamentals on the ground". However, The Sunday Mail (25/1) cited other commentators querying where the government would get the foreign currency to finance the budget.

The Herald (23/1) passively quoted government announcing that schools would open the following Tuesday without asking it to explain the measures it had taken to address the myriad problems plaguing the education sector. Neither did it seek comment from teachers.

The Herald (24/1) also attempted to downplay the prevalence of the cholera epidemic by reporting it as being "on a slow decline" in Harare because "no one" had died the previous Wednesday, citing city health officials and the WHO. Ironically, the same report indicated that over 95 people were admitted to Harare's two cholera clinics that day, in what it admitted to be "one of the highest daily totals", and that there had been a rise in cholera cases in Kadoma and Chegutu were 10 people died during the week.

The private papers gave a more balanced perspective of these issues.

For example, they published the reasons why the MDC-T was reluctant to join ZANU PF in a coalition government, including its concerns that ZANU PF was wilfully violating the agreement by abducting and arresting its supporters and unilaterally appointing senior government officials. The private Press also doubted SADC's chances of resolving differences between the two parties. The Zimbabwean (22/1), for example, accused the regional body of "bias", citing its recommendations, which "sidesteps real issues raised by the MDC". However, the paper wrongly claimed to be breaking the news about SADC's position, which was already in the public domain by the time it hit the streets.
The private papers also highlighted intensifying international condemnation of Mugabe's culpability in the stalemate with The Standard (25/1) reporting Graca Machel, a member of the Elders group, as having described his government as "illegitimate" and calling for its removal.

Furthermore, these papers publicized the problems dogging the country's economic, heath and education sectors and questioned the effectiveness of government's policies to arrest them.

Fig 2: Voice distribution in the Press

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