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Transitional Barometer Monthly Report: January 2010
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
January 01, 2010

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THE government-controlled public media remained poor watchdogs of the unity government's compliance record according to the terms of the Global Political Agreement (GPA).

Not only did they fail to give any enlightening insights into the coalition's intractable delays over resolving outstanding issues in the power-sharing agreement and delivering on its reconstruction promises, they also continued to give heavily biased and favourable coverage to the ZANU PF arm of government at the expense of its MDC partners.

Of the 220 reports these media carried on the coalition's activities in January, 118 (54%) were on ZANU PF activities with the MDC formations sharing 46%: MDC-T 37% (82 stories) and nine percent (20 stories) for MDC-M.

The voice of ZANU PF was also the most heard, constituting 116 (55%) of the 208 voices the public media carried on the political parties' activities. MDC-T was quoted 63 times (30%) while the MDC-M was accessed 29 times (14%). See Figs 1 and 2.

The government-controlled media's reports on ZANU PF activities mostly championed the party's cause in its power-sharing dealings with the MDC formations, while those they carried on the MDC-T were generally negative, portraying it as an unfaithful partner and an obstacle to the resolution of outstanding issues. As a result, their coverage of the coalition's activities violated both the principle of "balanced and fair coverage" and the requirement that the media "refrain from using abusive language that may incite hostility, political intolerance and ethnic hatred or that unfairly undermines political parties and other organisations" as stated in Article 19(d & e) of the GPA.

Fig. 1: The most covered party in the public media

Fig. 2. The most heard political party in the public media

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