Election coverage manual launched

Lungelo Ndhlovu, Sunday News Reporter
To ensure journalists’ safety and access to information ahead of this year’s elections in July, the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC), in collaboration with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), authored a manual to provide journalists with guidelines for covering elections.

The manual informs journalists about the country’s electoral systems, including how the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) functions, voter registration and the pre-election environment, according to Mr Godwin Phiri, ZMC’s executive secretary.

“The purpose is to ensure that we can create a conducive peaceful environment that guarantees the safety of journalists and access to information. We want journalists to speak and write from the position of knowledge and not speculation,” said ZMC executive secretary  Mr Phiri.

The manual covers topics important for journalists to know before the elections, such as how election primaries work, the process of candidate nomination, voting procedures on polling day, vote counting and compilation of results, post-election events and complaints, as well as their role during election processes.

“The overarching objective is that elections need to be credible, and for us the interest is that journalists must provide information that enables citizens to be properly informed,” said Mr Phiri.

In addition to educating journalists about voting systems, the manual addresses media polarisation through increasing public trust in the media. Placing a strong emphasis on ethical behaviour and uniform standards across outlets is one way it aims to do so, according to Phiri.

“We are aware of the polarisation of the media and want our journalists to act professionally so that the media will continue to be credible after the elections.

“We want our journalists to be able to distinguish themselves from social media (and to) conduct themselves in a professional manner, not to be the ones seen driving divisions in the country. We are hoping that by having commonality in standards, ethics (and) professionalism, journalists can see themselves as colleagues,” he added.

While the guide is a welcome development, Mr Njabulo Ncube, Zimbabwe National Editors Forum co-ordinator, highlighted that it came late, as elections were less than a year away when it was published last November.

“Elections are a process, not an event. The manual should have been in place as soon as after the 2018 polls, to address well known transgressions of Zimbabwe media – both public and private, including online. Several reports by local, regional and international observer missions have consistently red-flagged the local media (as driving polarization), but nothing has been done about these issues which ZMC and the election management body are aware of,” he said.

However, Mr Tabani Moyo, regional secretariat director for the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), applauded the ZMC for developing a manual to assist journalists in creating a conducive environment during elections.