|
Back to Index
Report
on media coverage of humanitarian issues: April 2009
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
June 06, 2009
Download
this document
- Word
97 version (419KB)
- Adobe
PDF version (66.7KB)
If
you do not have the free Acrobat reader on your computer, download
it from the Adobe website by clicking
here.
This report
assesses the monthly media coverage of the coalition government's
implementation of Article 16 of the Global
Political Agreement (GPA), under which the three ruling parties
pledged to ensure that state institutions and NGOs "shall
render humanitarian and food assistance without discrimination on
the grounds of race, ethnicity, gender political affiliation or
religion". It also examines the media's provision of
humanitarian information for the benefit of the Zimbabwean population
and humanitarian actors, including comparative analysis of Hansard's
records of parliamentary debates on humanitarian issues and their
coverage in the media.
Summary
The media carried 545 stories on indicators of the country's
humanitarian crisis in April, an increase of 317 stories from the
March statistics. Of the 545 stories, 289 (53%) were in the public
media while the remaining 47% featured in the privately owned news
outlets. However, the public media's slight edge over the
private media did not turn into a thorough examination of the country's
humanitarian crisis. Instead, most of their reports were passive
regurgitations of official statements.
Although the media also
featured 66 stories on parliamentary business, none were on Parliament's
discussion of the country's humanitarian problems or government's
plans to address them as expected of it under the GPA. Instead,
almost all the reports were on the parliamentary committee on constitutional
reform. This appeared to stem from the fact that Parliament adjourned
at the beginning of April 2009 resulting in most of its business
being conducted outside the House through its committees, with the
Constitution Select Committee the most visible.
Humanitarian
issues
Continued human rights
violations, underlined by the detention of civic and political activists,
remained the most topical of all other humanitarian issues carried
in the media in April. They constituted 204 or 37% of the 545 reports
the media carried on the subject. Of these, 164 (93%) appeared in
the private media while only 40 (7%) were in the government media
(See Fig 1).
Besides their evident
under-coverage of the matter, the official media simply reported
on the detentions and human rights violations as normal and not
indicative of the new government's failure to institute democratic
reforms as stipulated in the GPA. It was only the private media
that categorically reported on the detentions and other rights violations
as reflective of the discord in government and threatened its stability
and effectiveness.
Instead, the government
media appeared more interested in rehashing official statements
that projected government as taking measures to address shortages
of farming inputs and implements. As a result, they carried more
stories on these issues, which translated to 34% of the 289 stories
the official media carried on indicators of the country's
humanitarian crisis. But this significant coverage did not reflect
in-depth analysis as these media largely ignored allegations of
corruption that have plagued previous input and farm mechanisation
programmes by the old ZANU PF government or assessed the sufficiency
of the new government's interventionist programmes in boosting
the country's precarious food levels. Neither did they openly
expose the chaos on farms mainly stemming from ZANU PF-sponsored
farm seizures dressed as government's drive to remedy imbalances
on land ownership.
Only the private
media tried to expose these issues in their reports.
Download
full document
Visit the MMPZ
fact
sheet
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
