Dissemination of codes of media ethics puzzling

Geoffrey Nyarota Correspondent
In any case, it is surely the scribes who should acquaint themselves with their Code of Ethics, not the newspaper readers. Likewise, it is the doctors who should abide by the Hippocratic Oath, not their patients.

MY article last Thursday, on October 22, following, as it did, hard on the heels of my television appearance on Media Watch on which occasions I made some harsh remarks on the shocking decline in the standard of journalism ethics in Zimbabwe appears to have ruffled feathers in more places than one.

Alexander Rusero, described by The Herald as a political analyst and media critic based in Harare but who in reality is a lecturer taking trainee journalists through the basics of news reporting in the school of journalism at the Harare Polytechnic, vigorously defended both the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) and the Zimbabwe Voluntary Media Council (ZVMC), which institutions I had singled out for censure in my article.

I had suggested that they were both sleeping on the job in that they were failing to perform their watchdog role of monitoring the upholding of ethics in the practice of journalism in the Zimbabwe media.

Rusero asserted that it was not fair to blame what he referred to as the resource-constrained ZMC “for sleeping on the job” as suggested by me.

“Recently I was with ZMC’s research manager, Academy Chinamhora, in Beijing,” Rusero proclaimed. “He passionately expressed grief over the declining levels of ethical journalism and how his organisation is in near paralysis due to insufficient budgetary support.”

Rusero omitted to ask Chinamhora the amount of budgetary support required by ZMC to facilitate the drafting of a simple statement of official protest at the declining levels of ethical journalism. ZMC would then call a Press conference at the institution for purposes of issuing the press statement. News reporters would be happy to file a story with a difference, which their editors would be equally delighted to print on their front pages at no cost whatsoever to ZMC.

A newspaper front page headline addressing an issue in the national interest and highlighting a subject other than the latest exploits of First Lady Grace Mugabe or former Minister Didymus Mutasa would be granted to sell a few extra copies of any newspaper.

Rusero was clearly determined to defend his alma mater at all costs, even when ZMC research manager Chinamhora passionately agreed with my assertion that ethical journalism was on the decline in Zimbabwe, a sentiment which Rusero himself said he totally agreed with. Even in my ignorance of the purpose of Chinamhora and Rusero’s trip to Beijing I am left to speculate that the cost of their two return tickets might have been better spent on more productive initiatives at ZMC, such as funding the dissemination of their concerns over the decline in the quality of journalism ethics in Zimbabwe.

On the other hand, in his defence of the VMCZ Rusero revealed that he had personally known the executive director of the council, Loughty Dube, for a long time and “his personal and professional devotion on media ethics was unparalleled”.

To avoid a situation where I was bound to spend valuable time in the High Court fighting professional colleagues who have a tendency to disregard the ethical requirement to always tell the truth, I appealed officially in writing to the VMCZ on May 20, 2015 after I had been scandalously defamed in The Financial Gazette, a respected weekly. To date, five months later, I have not been accorded the simple courtesy of acknowledgement of my communication.

I wrote to VMCZ again a week later on May 27. In these days of e-mail communication, acknowledgement can be instantaneous.

“Please kindly acknowledge,” I wrote this time around, “that you have received my communication to you last week on the subject of the several serious and defamatory falsehoods that ZUJ (Zimbabwe Union of Journalists) secretary general, Foster Dongozi, unethically caused the Financial Gazette to publish about me recently.”

Upon realising that they had published an article that contained no less than 14 false statements about me, some of them extremely defamatory, the newspaper immediately took the precautionary measure of retracting the disgraceful article in its entirety, while tendering appropriate apologies to me.

“This will now be third complaint that I have submitted to you in your official capacity as director of VMCZ that you have completely ignored,” I concluded.

At the time of writing, on October 26, I still had not received any response, not even a simple acknowledgement of this second communication. While I waited for them to take appropriate action I read somewhere in the press that VMCZ were busy organising funding partner-funded soccer matches for journalists.

On October 25, five months later Rusero has the impertinence to cast aspersions on my well-grounded assertion that the VMCZ is sleeping on the job as it is doing nothing visible to actively restrain ethically unruly journalism.

In fairness to VMCZ, last year they embarked on an initiative to translate their Code of Conduct into vernacular languages, starting with Shona, an exercise of dubious relevance and urgency, given that Zimbabwe’s only Shona language newspaper, Kwayedza, is not associated with the VMCZ. But this is an exercise, nevertheless, of obvious profitability in the circumstances that the contract to print this and other many VMCZ publications was granted to a publishing company belonging to Raphael Khumalo, a board member.

Last week copies of the Tonga Code of Conduct were delivered to Eveline Masuku, headwoman of Tinde Village in Binga.

Speaking at the handover ceremony, VMCZ Media Ethics Committee chairperson, Tapfuma Machakaire, spoke tongue-in-cheek when he said: “The Tonga Code empowers the Tonga-speaking people of Binga to effectively play the watchdog role on Zimbabwean media.”

Really?

Meanwhile Shona and Ndebele versions have been printed and distributed. The exercise will in the fullness of time cover the whole of Zimbabwe with versions in Kalanga, Venda, Ndau and other vernacular languages or dialects, no doubt. A lot of costly printing is clearly going to take place in an exercise ostensibly designed to transfer responsibility for enforcement of ethical journalism from VMCZ to the masses.

But someone will have to convince me how the people of Mudzimukunze Village, my home in the Makoni District of Manicaland, will genuinely be empowered by this exercise to play a watchdog role on the Zimbabwean media after reading their copy of the Shona Code.

Should my elderly uncle in Mudzimukunze or young cousin there really be bothered with enforcement of journalism ethics in Harare when they don’t have any contact with newspapers in the first place, except when their well-heeled urban-based offspring bring old copies for use in their Blair toilet or to roll their tobacco?

How are they expected to play their watchdog role on the odd occasion when they spot an ethical recklessness in their old newspaper? By phoning 0772 125 659, the VMCZ complaints line in Harare?

Let us be serious about our journalism profession, comrades. Our funding partners should help our rural communities by distributing newspapers to them, not codes of journalism ethics to people who don’t read newspapers in the first place. I visited Binga during the IMPI outreach programme. A major complaint there, as in other rural areas, was a serious lack of access to media products, both print and electronic.

At this rate, translated copies of the Hippocratic Oath, held sacred by physicians who vow to treat the ill to the best of their ability, will soon be distributed to the rural communities of highly educated Zimbabwe.

From a different perspective, by the time copies of the journalism code of ethics are distributed to all of Zimbabwe’s villages, cities, towns and farms how many copies will have been printed and at what cost? Will our journalism necessarily be more ethical as a result?

In any case, it is surely the scribes who should acquaint themselves with their Code of Ethics, not the newspaper readers. Likewise, it is the doctors who should abide by the Hippocratic Oath, not their patients.

Back in 2011 I was the victim of obvious laxity at VMCZ after The Daily News sought to benefit from associating its title with my good name by misrepresenting to its readers that I was collaborating in the re-launch of the Daily News.

Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), publishers of The Daily News, repatriated me from the United States of America in February 2010 to spearhead preparations for the re-launch of its newspaper, once it was re-registered by the ZMC, following its closure in 2003.

Johannesburg-based ANZ chief executive Jethro Goko told me in writing that newspaper readers in Zimbabwe associated the name Geoffrey Nyarota with The Daily News, hence the desire on the part of the company to re-engage me after they dismissed me for no good reason also back in 2003, resulting in my unscheduled departure for the United States.

After my arrival back in Harare the Daily News was happily registered on May 26, 2010. But on the following day, May 27, all hell literally broke loose for me when I was fired once more, again for no good reason. This time I took the case to the Labour Court and won.

The Daily News was finally re-launched in 2011. While we were still thus locked in mortal conflict in the courts the launch issue of the new paper printed my picture and name on an inside page under the headline, “We are back.” This juxtaposition of my picture, name and this optimistic headline in the total absence of the picture and name of the paper’s new editor, John Gambanga, was mischievously calculated to deceive the reading public into believing that I was back as editor of The Daily News.

Given that I had pushed circulation of The Daily News to 129 500 copies sold in one day in 2000, after one year in the market, the urge to misrepresent was quite understandable, given that the paper even now struggles to sell 10 000 copies a day after four years back in the market.

But being portrayed as editor of The Daily News at a time when I was fighting ANZ in court was a particularly painful experience. In fact, to date ANZ has not paid me the money awarded to me by the Arbitrator in February 2012 after winning the case. I immediately approached the VMCZ to seek justice over the unethical “We are back” headline. The council’s Complaints Committee chaired by Retired Judge George Smith ruled that The Daily News had done nothing unethical. I was shocked and appealed against this judgement, also pointing out in the process that the chairman of VMCZ, lawyer Alec Muchadehama, should have recused himself from this case because at that time he was the legal adviser for The Daily News.

This time they decided that the newspaper owed me a clarification and must therefore publicly set the record straight about my association, or absence thereof, with it. To date the newspaper has ignored the order in defiance. As a result, many of the newspaper’s readers genuinely believe that I am still associated with the Daily News. They congratulate me when the paper does good. But mostly they complain or criticise me when it does something ethically wrong.

That particular case of the VMCZ failing to satisfactorily address my complaint, with subsequent communication being ignored by both Loughty Dube and his predecessor, Takura Zhangazha, who departed from VMCZ without concluding my case, is too long to narrate in this article, but details can be supplied on request or it can be made the subject of a separate article in the not-too-distant future, should VMCZ so wish.

Meanwhile, Alexander Rusero now adds salt to my injury because, in his own words, he knows the executive director of VMCZ personally. Presumably, because he does not know me personally, he hauls me over live coals with regard to the 13-year old Tadyanemhandu story in my Daily News, which I fully retracted and apologised over, as required by the ethics of professional journalism.

Many who currently sit on the board of the VMCZ are also my personal friends or acquaintances. They include Davison Maruziva, my deputy at both The Chronicle and The Daily News, Edna Machirori, my news editor on The Chronicle, my friend Chris Chinaka, Tapfuma Machakaire, Alec Muchadehama, Raphael Khumalo, Tawanda Majoni, Father Oskar Wermter, Rev Dr Sebastian Bakare and Davis Guzha.

But this happy situation does not preclude me from making adverse comment on VMCZ’s affairs when I believe such matters are in the public interest.