Latest MMPZ Report Ending October 29


General comment
THIS week the government media ignored incidents of electoral violence and other related violations.
As has become the norm, only the private media exposed the abuses. They carried 15 reports that highlighted cases of arson, violent attacks, intimidation and vote-buying, allegedly perpetrated by ZANU PF activists against perceived MDC members. However, almost all the reports mainly relied on the opposition claims and lacked independent corroboration. For example, in one of the stories, SW Radio Africa (23/10) quoted MDC’s suspended Chitungwiza mayor Misheck Shoko claiming that he “survived an assassination attempt” after “unidentified gunmen opened fire at his house” and “fired three shots at him at close range”.
No effort was made to establish the veracity of these serious allegations.
Instead, the station simply allowed him to attribute the incidents to suspected “ZANU PF security organs”, who had “trailed him from the moment he started campaigning in some rural wards in Dema”.

The station (25/10) and Studio 7 (26/10) also reported the opposition accusing ruling party activists of burning down its supporters’ houses in Gokwe, Mudzi, Mutoko and some parts of Manicaland. The stories were part of several unsubstantiated reports the private media carried on electoral violence.

The private electronic media also carried three other incidents of rights violations. These were on the arrest of university students and Women of Zimbabwe Arise activists on allegations of engaging in ‘illegal’ demonstrations and addressing unsanctioned public gatherings.
The government media also censored these cases.
They similarly ignored reports of government’s intention to introduce legislation that would cripple private telecommunications companies by giving the state-owned TelOne a monopoly over foreign currency earned through termination rates for international traffic.
This appeared in the Zimbabwe Independent (27/10).
The move, the paper noted, was in disregard of a January 2004 High Court ruling that set aside a similar statutory instrument and in “violation of a 1998 Supreme Court ruling”, which struck down the state’s monopoly on communications.


2. Elections
THE media inadequately handled last weekend’s local government elections, most of which were won by ZANU PF. Generally, they provided little information on the mechanics governing the polls. As a result, the electorate largely remained in the dark on the state of the voters’ rolls, ward demarcations, the location of polling stations and the composition and credentials of accredited observers.
In fact, voters only learnt of the location of voting booths on the day of the election through an advertisement placed in The Herald (28/10). But how the electoral authorities expected voters – especially those in the rural areas where most of the elections were held – to access at short notice such vital information from the paper, which largely circulates in urban centres remained unquestioned.
Instead, the official media carried 26 stories (ZBH [23] and government Press [3]) that passively quoted the electoral authorities expressing their readiness for the polls. For example, ZTV and Spot FM (25/10, 8pm) passively reported the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission saying it had established 3 000 polling stations without investigating whether they were adequate.

Similarly, The Herald (26/10) simply announced that accreditation of observers was underway without informing its readers about how many were eventually accredited.
Rather, the government media seemed more interested in promoting ZANU PF. For example – in clear violation of its public service mandate – all 17 campaign stories that ZBH aired were on the ruling party. None was on the opposition. The MDC was mainly mentioned in the context of ZANU PF’s vilification of the party. Likewise, of the nine campaign stories the official papers carried, seven were exclusively on the ruling party while only two reported all the contesting parties commenting on their preparations.

Even then, the stories contained editorial intrusions that maligned the opposition as a British puppet bereft of meaningful policies.
For instance, after reporting on the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC’s preparations, the Chronicle (26/10) then vilified the party as a “British backed opposition party” that was “obsessed with opposing everything that ZANU-PF says or does no matter how good without offering any alternatives.” On the contrary, all stories on ZANU PF that the official media carried were glowing projections of the party.

It was in this context that they avoided the in-house squabbles in the ruling party, which resulted in it registering two sets of candidates for each of the five wards in Kadoma.
ZBH (24&27/10, 8pm), The Herald and The Chronicle (25/10) merely reported ZANU PF officials threatening to expel candidates who had defied the party by contesting the elections without investigating the cause for such dissent.

The government media’s unbalanced coverage was illustrated by their sourcing patterns.


Except for the two stories that Studio 7 carried quoting the Zimbabwe Election Support Network bemoaning inadequate voter registration and education, the private media were no better. They barely assessed the country’s electoral framework.
Instead, they gave more space to campaigns and politically motivated violence.

But unlike the government media, the private papers strove for balance by giving publicity to ZANU PF campaigns in three cases, Tsvangirai faction (two) and the Arthur Mutambara-led MDC (once). Similarly, Studio 7 gave space to all contesting parties: ZANU PF (twice), Tsvangirai group (twice) and the Mutambara camp (once).
However, other private media did not display such fairness.

The three campaign reports carried by SW Radio Africa and the online news agency, Zimdaily only focused on the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC faction, while New Zimbabwe.com’s single story was on ZANU PF factionalism in Kadoma.
Such imbalance was more apparent in the 15 reports the private media carried (private electronic media [8] and private Press [7]) on incidents of electoral violence and rights abuses by the ruling party against its opponents.
Almost all the reports relied on the MDC allegations and lacked independent verification.
The government media completely ignored such reports but simply magnified the authorities statements that the campaign period was peaceful.
It is against this background that ZBH (25/10, 8pm) and The Herald (26/20) failed to give full details on the six cases of “petty” political violence the police said they recorded in Rushinga, Glendale and Gokwe.
Instead, ZBH drowned the matter with police assurances that they would ensure there was “peace and tranquility”, adding that the situation was “conducive for free and fair elections”.

Notably, most MDC voices were quoted accusing the ruling party of fanning political violence.


3. Pictorial use in the Press
THIS week MMPZ monitored 46 images (pictures and cartoons) that appeared in the Press illustrating developments in the political, economic and agricultural sectors. Of these, 29 appeared in government papers and 17 in the private Press. Notably, almost all the images carried in the official Press depicted an economically and agriculturally stable Zimbabwe, enjoying sound diplomatic relations.
In contrast, most of the pictures carried in the private papers mainly consisted of ‘mug shots’ of sources cited in their reports. The only exceptions were their cartoons, which mostly dramatised government’s poor management policies.

a) International Relations
Pictures carried in the official papers sought to portray government as enjoying good international relations. The papers used a SADC summit held in South Africa to perpetuate such perceptions. For example, in one of its front-page pictures, The Herald (24/10) captured President Mugabe and his SA and Lesotho counterparts “sharing a joke” on the sidelines of the one-day meeting. The other was a group picture of the “SADC heads of state and government and members of the secretariat” shot at a different occasion: the 26th SADC Summit in Lesotho “recently”.
Besides the use of Mugabe’s presence at SADC meetings as a sign of Zimbabwe’s sound regional relations, the official papers also carried three pictures demonstrating the alleged successes of government’s ‘Look-East’ policy.
They then carried two cartoons portraying civic, labour and opposition organisations as puppets of the West (The Herald 29/10 and Sunday Mail). For example, The Herald cartoon depicted them as “African Hunting Dogs” on the leash of British Premier Tony Blair, who was shown dangling a bone before them.

Images in the private media over the issue were not only few, but dismal. They were mainly shots of the faces of the sources they quoted. However, a cartoon carried on the subject by the Sunday Mirror (29/10) implied, like the government papers, that Zimbabwe’s problems stemmed from Western interference, an allegation endlessly repeated by government officials and disseminated by the government media without providing any evidence.

b) Economic Issues
The official Press’ pictures on the economy promoted government efforts to turn around the economy, especially through the Reserve Bank. Four of the nine pictures on the subject were images of the bank’s governor, Gideon Gono. The Herald (23/10), for example, carried a prominent sequence of three pictures of Gono, caught listening attentively or emphasising points during an interview with the paper on the country’s economy. The fourth picture showed Gono shaking hands with a member of a cheerful crowd “soon after the introduction” of the new bearer cheques in Harare “recently”. The caption described him as a “man of the people.”
In fact, The Herald, the Manica Post and The Daily Mirror carried an extraordinary and unprecedented 15-page central bank supplement of cartoons entitled: Current Impediments and Contradictions in the Zimbabwean Economy: A cartoonist’s view.
The cartoons depicted the country as divided between those working hard to revive the economy (generally implied here as policy makers) and those sabotaging the economy, depicted as economic and agricultural players.
Except for two images in The Financial Gazette (26/10) and Zimbabwe Independent (27/10), the rest of the pictures in the private Press did not tell any particular stories. The Independent carried a humorous caricature of government’s anti-corruption commission, while the Gazette featured two sequence pictures of a gesticulating former Cabinet minister Enos Nkala blasting Zimbabweans as “useless people who have allowed ZANU PF to ruin the country”.

c) Agricultural Issues
The government papers also used images to project the authorities as ready for the new farming season through timely provision of agricultural inputs to farmers such as seed, fuel and fertiliser. However, some of the photographs contradicted stories they were supposed to support. For example, while The Herald (23/10) carried an image of a man standing before bags of fertilizer, giving the impression that there were enough inputs, the caption and the story accompanying it revealed that there was actually a “shortfall of 10 000 tonnes of maize seed” that needed to be imported.
Yet, this did not stop the paper (26/10) and The Sunday Mail (29/10) from publishing images depicting the country’s chaotic agricultural preparations as proceeding smoothly. The Herald, for example, carried a picture showing a ‘farmer’ accessing fuel “for use in the forthcoming season” but remained quiet on the quantity of fuel since delivered and whether it was enough for the farmers’ requirements.


4. ZBH news selection and treatment

a. Suffocation of important news
THE government broadcaster’s failure to adequately handle pertinent issues affecting the public was illustrated by its suffocation or censorship of important stories. For example, ZTV (23/10&24/10, 8pm) buried news that “seven more cases of anthrax have been detected in humans in Hurungwe” in its bulletins, preferring to give prominence to less important stories like a conference on distance education. Worse still, there was no information on the extent of the pandemic or when it exactly broke out.
The broadcaster also ignored the resumption of the trial of Michael Peter Hitschman, who is facing conspiracy charges. This was in stark contrast to the massive publicity it gave to the case early this year when Hitschman was arrested together with some MDC officials on charges of plotting a coup.

Only the private media [Studio 7 & SW Radio Africa (26/10) and New Zimbabwe.com (27/10)] reported this important news during the week. It also demonstrated the government media’s disregard for its journalistic obligation to report trials it has started reporting on. ZBH also censored cases of alleged corruption involving government officials. Again these only appeared in the private media.

b. Misleading reports
Apart from suffocating important stories, ZBH also carried misleading reports that sought to sanitise the country’s crisis. For instance, this week ZTV continued to give the impression that the local dollar had remained stable against major currencies, without attributing it to government controls on the exchange rate.
Besides, the broadcaster also tried to project the ‘national vision’ document drafted by some church leaders as having been unconditionally embraced by all Zimbabweans, including President Mugabe. For example, while ZTV (27/10, 8pm) reported Mugabe as having wholly endorsed the church initiative, his comments showed otherwise. He was quoted saying that although the document was welcome some issues that it proposed such as the drafting of a new constitution were “not negotiable,” just like “independence” and “sovereignty”.
Similarly, while Spot FM (27/10, 1pm) depicted the document as having been endorsed countrywide saying it now belonged to “each and every Zimbabwean” there was no evidence to support this.

c. Technical blunders
ZBH’s poor news presentation was worsened by the technical glitches that characterised some of its bulletins of the week. These included poor sound quality, wrong titles and footage mix-ups. ZTV (26/10, 8pm) bulletin epitomized the broadcaster’s technical incompetence. In its report on the outgoing Austrian Ambassador’s meeting with Mugabe, the station showed a video of tobacco farmers transplanting the crop instead.
An effort to correct the mix-up resulted in more boobs as another wrong video on the burial of Professor Peresu was aired. It was only after the third attempt that ZTV finally got it right.
Similarly, Spot FM (26/10, 8pm) aired a wrong newsreel in place of its usual ‘Good Evening’ bulletin. The error was only rectified five minutes later. Besides such blunders the broadcaster also displayed sloppy titling. For example, ZTV (26/10, 6pm) presented the National Arts Council as National AIDS Council.
No apologies!
Edited