adminMangwende said description does not amount to hate speech. He said media bosses were opposed to hate speech but not to robust discussion. 0Mangwende said journalists should be responsible and not become megaphones of hate speech simply because they are not the ones who said it.
“We need to discourage hate speech. There has been hate speech across the board. We need to black out all hate speech,” he said.
Herald deputy editor Caesar Zvayi, who was one of the panellists, said the first port of call for all journalists was ethical practice and that it was important to distinguish between opinion and hate speech.
“If we do that there won’t be any problems. Speaking for our paper, we carefully select news from opinion and also comments made by politicians are their own right. We cannot deny them the right to inform the public,” he said.
MMPZ, represented by Edison Madondo, accused The Herald of carrying more stories with hate speech to which Zvayi said: “If MMPZ was not practising selective monitoring, there will be no way The Herald could have committed more cases of hate speech than The Daily News.
“We have heard the President being called a dictator, octogenarian . . . All these can be found in the Daily News. How does this escape the MMPZ if it is not practising selective monitoring?” he quizzed.
He said Zimpapers was carrying out an eight-month training programme for its reporters where they were being trained to distinguish news from opinion.
Online Reporter