adminGeoffrey Nyarota Correspondent
I publicly fingered The Daily News and NewsDay as the worst culprits of the current wave of ethical malpractice and cited various examples.
I READ with trepidation an article in last Friday’s issue of The Herald in which it was casually reported that during what was described as a frank exchange of views between editors from various publications and the Information, Media and Broadcasting Services permanent secretary, George Charamba, the previous day, some unidentified editors had disclosed that the now finally much-talked-about IMPI Report had been adulterated.
Such adulteration of the 666-page document would presumably have been effected either by myself as chairperson of IMPI and, therefore, ultimate editor of the report, or by the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (Sardc), its drafters.
I was particularly amazed by this disclosure because it was made eight months after the IMPI Report was presented to the then Minister of Information, Professor Jonathan Moyo, by its compilers, who included the very editors now making adverse comments about its content. The handover was performed at a public function attended in March 2015, by many leading media personalities.
The handover ceremony itself was a sequel to a process of verification and approval by the 24 members of the panel of inquiry. The members included five prominent editors, Pikirayi Deketeke, then editor-in-chief of Zimbabwe Newspapers, Vincent Kahiya, then editor-in-chief of Alpha Media Holdings, Stanley Gama, Editor-in-chief of the Daily News, Dumisani Muleya, editor of The Zimbabwe Independent and Constantine Chimakure, editor of the now defunct Zimbabwe Mail.
The process of approval and adoption was in two stages. Sardc, the expert drafters of the report, submitted the draft chapters of the report to us at IMPI. The chapters were in turn submitted to the seven thematic committees of the panel of inquiry for their approval. This having been done, with the committees having submitted their corrections and comments back, the drafters then incorporated those various corrections in the draft chapters. Sardc then submitted the final draft of the whole report, which once more was distributed to all panellists again through their thematic committees for their final approval.
After an inordinate delay on the part of panellists I sent a reminder to all of them on February 9, 2015, to point out that this day was the final deadline for acceptance of corrections.
“Silence on the part of panellists will be taken as an indication of approval of the content of the report and, therefore, of its adoption by IMPI,” I stated in part in the email communication to panellists. ”It will, therefore, be forwarded to the Ministry. The Ministry, Sardc and I are all anxious that we put closure to the process.”
I received three responses from panellists. The first was from Jacqueline Chikakano, a lawyer by profession, who was the chairperson of the Media Law Reform and Access to Information Thematic Committee.
“Noted, Chairperson,” she wrote. “We will send through any corrections by end of day, as agreed.”
The second response was filed in by Constantine Chimakure, who served as a member of the Polarisation, and Interference Thematic Committee. It is necessary in the unfolding circumstances to quote his communication in full.
“I have gone through the report,” he said. “I am not sure why a whole section on state security interference in the media was removed from the thematic committee report on polarisation. The section dealt with how the Central Intelligence Organisation bought into the Zimbabwe Mirror Newspaper Group and Fingaz. In my view that is very important and the biggest interference in the media ever experienced in this country.”
The CEO of The Financial Gazette, Jacob Chisese, was an IMPI panellist, serving on the Media as Business Thematic Committee. He immediately responded to Chimakure’s intervention.
“I refer to the scandalous statement that was made by Constantine Chimakure regarding the ownership of The Financial Gazette,” he stated.
“I wish to protest in the strongest possible terms regarding the misleading and inaccurate statement on the ownership of The Financial Gazette. The Financial Gazette is a private company registered at the Registrar of Companies and anyone who is interested can easily verify the facts at that office.
“The Financial Gazette reserves the right to take any action to protect its interests if deliberately misleading information is published. Please be guided accordingly.”
Given that Chimakure had a track record of a string of cases of defamation before the law courts, coupled with the fact that he had not provided details of how CIO had allegedly bought into the two media organisations, a decision was taken to err on the side of caution by not including Chimakure’s allegations in the report to protect the Ministry of Information the prospect of defending cases of defamation in the High Court long after IMPI had disbanded.
The last submission in response to my reminder that day came in from panellist Chris Chinaka, then Harare correspondent for Reuters International News Agency, one of the most senior journalists on the panel. Chinaka served on the thematic committee that covered Media Training and Capacity Building as well as Ethics and Standards of Professional Journalism.
“Besides the factual points raised at our last meeting around the broadcasting sector and the need for consistency and uniformity in presenting facts and figures, I support for the adoption of the report,” Chinaka said.
Nobody challenged the well-respected Chinaka’s proposal and on that note, there being no further communication from any other member of the panel and these comments having been passed on to the drafters, the report was taken as adopted by all the panellists.
It comes as a surprise therefore that the unnamed editors should have told the Permanent Secretary last week that the IMPI Report was adulterated. This naked allegation was made in the absence of any suggested evidence of such adulteration. Rather strangely, the allegation was made eight months after the report was adopted by the panellists before being submitted to the Ministry. Very suspiciously, this disclosure was made on the very day, Thursday, October 22, 2015, on which a lengthy article by me was published in The Herald in which I decried the shocking decline in the practice of ethical journalism in Zimbabwe. Four days earlier, on Monday October 19, I had appeared on the Media Watch TV programme and similarly condemned the performance of newspapers, especially the privately owned press, whose editors now sat before the Permanent Secretary while making disparaging report about the IMPI Report.
I publicly fingered The Daily News and NewsDay as the worst culprits of the current wave of ethical malpractice and cited various examples. Typically, the Herald reporter crafted his article containing such a serious allegation, as printed on Friday, without granting me an opportunity to comment or respond for simultaneous publication. Mine was an opinion piece, while his was a news report.
There have been isolated snippets of discontent from one particular editor in the Alpha Media Holdings group, Dumisani Muleya, editor of the Zimbabwe Independent. I did not take him seriously, however, because he told me point blank and in writing that he did not have time to read the IMPI drafts because he was too busy. Panellists were paid handsomely by the Ministry for the very purpose of participating in every aspect of compiling the report. At least Muleya spoke honestly. Others played truant or created problems, including leaking false information for publication in their newspapers with impunity throughout the whole IMPI process. Of the current crop of editors Muleya is the one I respect most and rate most highly.
More significantly, the chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, Honourable Lot Dhewa, invited the chairpersons of the IMPI thematic committees to a capacity building workshop with the members of his own committee. The workshop on the IMPI report was held on September 4 and 5 in Nyanga. The IMPI chairpersons all made positive presentations on their respective chapters and on the report in general.
Dr Nhamo Mhiripiri of the Department of Media Studies at the Midlands State University and chairperson of the Information Platforms and Content of Media Products thematic committee of IMPI told the workshop that his department at MSU was already implementing some of the IMPI Report’s recommendations on training ahead of the official adoption of the report.
Speaking generally, it was an inherent weakness of the IMPI process that the Ministry of Information appointed the nation’s leading editors literally to investigate themselves and to do so under the supervision of the chairperson, myself. This arrangement was fraught with potential for conflict if the chairperson insisted on a thorough investigation, with editors resisting exposure of some of their weaknesses.
Editors and newspaper managers fought tooth and nail against having details of their circulations and advertising performances included in the report. Yet pages 107 and 108 of the report are devoted to full details of the circulation figures of South Africa’s 22 daily and 25 weekly newspapers. Circulation figures of Kenyan and Zambian newspapers are also included in the report.
Yet the report is silent on the very important issue of newspaper circulations in Zimbabwe, thereby perpetuating a situation where The Herald, NewsDay and The Daily News have over the years each claimed that they are the biggest selling newspaper in the country. The IMPI Report, therefore failed to report on the status of newspaper circulations in Zimbabwe because of the resistance of newspaper executives sitting on the panel. This became an area of friction with the chairperson.
An appendix to Chapter 1, Media as Business, including New Media Platforms appears on Page 88. It is titled Newspapers and Advertising Performance. The appendix was the outcome of research personally conducted by the chairperson of IMPI with the assistance of Gloriah Ganyani, the research officer of the thematic committee on Media as Business. The chairperson of this committee Sharon Samushonga, who is the chief operating officer of Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, publishers of The Daily News, put up a spirited fight against inclusion of newspaper advertising performances in the IMPI Report.
It could be this addition of an important aspect of newspaper publishing that one or two panelists are now referring to as adulteration of the IMPI Report. But this appendix was circulated to all panellists before it was included in the report by the drafters.
The research revealed, for instance, that the advertising performance of newspapers such as The Zimbabwe Mail and The Southern Eye was appalling and publication of the papers was, therefore, unsustainable. The two newspapers were discontinued shortly after the completion of the IMPI Report.
(In tomorrow’s Herald: Distribution of codes of journalism ethics in villages puzzling.)
Geoffrey Nyarota is a veteran journalist and former editor of the Chronicle and Daily News. He is chairman of the Information and Media Panel of Inquiry.
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