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Daily News Zim's most credible newspaper: MMPZ
Wendy Muperi, Daily News
September 04, 2013

http://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2013/09/04/daily-news-zims-most-credible-newspaper-mmpz

The Daily News is Zimbabwe’s most credible newspaper, according to a survey by the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ).

Zimbabwe’s leading daily got a 99 percent credibility score in the ‘Media Credibility Index Zimbabwe’ survey conducted by MMPZ between April and June this year.

The independent daily, published by the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), only returned to the news stalls in March 2011 after eight years of unjust closure by government.

“The Daily News, with a credibility score of 99 percent, proved a credible source of information among this group (dailies), showing that they were capable of presenting national issues in a professional manner,” reads the report.

Out of 81 Daily News stories rated during the survey, only one failed the credibility test.

Second-placed NewsDay had 98 percent credibility, with two stories which were considered not credible out of 96 stories.

The Herald, Zimbabwe’s oldest daily newspaper, had 86 percent credibility and was censured for carrying stories that fell short of professional journalistic standards.

“Only The Herald regularly displayed gross professional incompetence in its coverage of top events,” said Media Credibility Index Zimbabwe.

“It ran 19 untrustworthy front-page stories in the three-month period, which translates to 86 percent of the 22 leading stories that fell short of professional journalistic standards.”

Daily newspapers had an aggregate credibility standing of 94 percent.

State-run Sunday Mail fared worse than all the surveyed media.

“Four (80 percent) of the five unreliable top news reports recorded in this media category (weeklies) appeared in the Sunday Mail,” the survey said.

“The Sunday Mail had the lowest credibility rating (83 percent) among all the surveyed media followed by The Herald (90 percent) and ZTV (92 percent).”

The private media was rated more favourably than their public counterparts.

“Combined, the public media had an overall credibility rating of 88 per cent, 11 percent lower the aggregate 99 percent achieved by the private media,” the findings say.

“The common weaknesses in the monitored stories mostly arose from bias stemming from misrepresentations, distortions, inaccuracies, lack of balance and fairness; and downright manipulation of facts to further particular interests.

The public media were the most frequent offenders,” observed the Media Credibility Index survey.

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