Back to Index

MMPZ regrets establishment of a disciplinary media council
The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
September 13, 2012

MMPZ notes with regret the Zimbabwe Media Commission's decision to fulfil its statutory obligation to set up a disciplinary media council, whose mandate will be to develop and enforce a code of conduct and ethics that will allow the Commission to punish offending journalists and media institutions.

MMPZ is opposed to the establishment of this Council on the grounds that it is an instrument of the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), which continues to be used to stifle all media activity in Zimbabwe.

This Act purports to regulate media activity, but in fact controls who can and cannot practice journalism and criminalizes offenders. The establishment of the media council will give the Commission additional powers to punish registered journalists and media houses who violate an as-yet-to-be-declared Code of Conduct. Such a repressive law severely diminishes Zimbabweans' rights to freedom of expression and is unnecessary in a democratic society. MMPZ is convinced that governments have no role to play in controlling media activity and deciding on codes of conduct for a country's media and communications industry beyond a strictly administrative role because such laws can - and are - used to suffocate debate and silence critical voices in society. Zimbabwe has proved to be an outstanding example of this "tyranny of thought" that has been imposed on its citizens.

Perfectly adequate defamation laws already exist that provide redress for those who seek justice against media outlets that overstep their constitutional rights to free expression. And the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe, set up by civil society and Zimbabwe's progressive media community, already exists to adjudicate the constructive resolution to disputes relating to the unprofessional conduct of journalists and media institutions.

The council being set up by the ZMC will serve no constructive purpose in Zimbabwe's efforts to establish a true participatory democracy, and will, in fact, simply add a new layer of bureaucracy and repression that already suffocates Zimbabwe's media business.

For these reasons MMPZ and its partners in civil society believe that real media reforms - and even those envisaged under the Global Political Agreement - cannot begin to be addressed without the repeal of AIPPA in its entirety.

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