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Herald Reporter
In a demonstration of a strong adherence to ethical standards, the country’s leading national daily, The Herald had zero complaints from readers for the whole of 2021.
According to a Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) report, the Alpha Media-owned daily, NewsDay had the highest number of complaints at three followed by an online publication, NewsHawks, which had two complaints filed with VMCZ.
The Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe’s Daily News had one complaint against it while several online publications including Zim Morning Post, ZimOnline News, Zim Live, Byo24 News and New Zimbabwe also had one complaint each.
Eight other titles out of Zimpapers’ 11 publications namely Chronicle, The Sunday News, B-Metro, Umthunywa, The Manica Post, Suburban, Business Weekly and Kwayedza also did not have a single concern lodged against them while the country’s biggest weekly, The Sunday Mail and leading tabloid, H-Metro, had one complaint each.
VMCZ compiles an annual Media Complaints Report that captures official complaints received from members of the public and organisations.
In a statement, VMCZ executive director Mr Loughty Dube said the reported complaints contained in the report were analysed according to the nurture of the complaints; who complained, the demographics of the complaints and the newspapers complained against among other issues analysed.
The Media Complaints Report, he said, also served as a barometer to measure how professional the media in Zimbabwe was and also gave the VMCZ Media Complaints Committee an indicator on issues the media needed to address in order to remain ethical and professional.
“We at VMCZ hope this publication will be useful for you to reflect on the state of the media in Zimbabwe and also to receive feedback from you on the cases reported and the manner in which they were handled,” said Mr Dube.
Online Reporter