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Weekly Media Review 2010-47
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
Monday November 29th - Sunday December 5th 2010
December 10, 2010

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Private diplomatic correspondence between the former US ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell, and his government, leaked by a website called Wikileaks, provoked outrage from ZANU PF and the media outlets it controls this week.

The correspondence was part of thousands of classified US diplomatic messages publicized by this website. They were mostly written by senior US officials expressing their personal views on America's foreign policy and leadership credentials of political figures, including President Mugabe and his coalition partners.

The government media ignored Dell's criticism of Mugabe's misrule while giving widespread publicity to his reservations about Prime Minister Tsvangirai's leadership abilities.

Dell's admission that his government supported the MDC-T opened the floodgates of disdainful criticism against the party and its leader.

This overshadowed all other national issues, such as the need to resolve the prolonged power-sharing dispute and constitutional reform.

While the private media also gave significant publicity to Dell's controversial correspondence, they were not distracted from other pertinent matters such as ongoing political violence, which they argued was evidence that Zimbabwe was not yet ready for credible national elections.

Fig 1: Topical news distribution in the media

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