adminGeoffrey Nyarota Correspondent
My crime appears to be that I have virtually single-handedly launched a campaign against the increasingly flourishing practice of unethical journalism in Zimbabwean newspapers, especially The Daily News, a newspaper with which I have a strong affinity to as its founding editor in 1999.
LAST week the editor of The Daily News, Mr Stanley Gama, sat down to pen a very malicious article through publication of which he sought to demolish once and for all my reputation as a journalist of internationally recognised accomplishment and reputation.
Whether he succeeded remains to be seen. But in fairness and in keeping with ethical journalism practice Mr Gama and The Daily News owe me an opportunity not only to respond to his scurrilous article, but also to defend myself against the many malicious, some of them defamatory, allegations published against me in the article “Calm down Geoff, in your own interest”, published in the paper on Thursday, November 5, 2015.
Mr Gama owes me this opportunity because society, through the court of public opinion, does not take kindly to newspaper editors who attack defenceless people viciously and maliciously without allowing them to defend themselves. The consequences of such denial can be costly.
My crime, according to the article, appears to be that I have virtually single-handedly launched a campaign against the increasingly flourishing practice of unethical journalism in Zimbabwean newspapers, especially The Daily News, a newspaper with which I have a strong affinity to as its founding editor in 1999.
Describing me, no doubt to the surprise of my former newspaper’s diminishing number of readers, as a State media correspondent and a failed politician, Mr Gama takes issue with the fact that I refused to be abused by Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), a company of which I was co-founder in 1998. The Daily News sought to use my name and picture to create the impression that I was in charge of the newspaper when it was re-launched in 2011 when, in fact, I had been unlawfully dismissed from the newspaper 10 months earlier in March 2010.
Mr Gama abuses his position as newspaper editor by referring contemptuously to my decision to contribute articles to The Herald. If the truth be told, throughout my career as a journalist I have become used to addressing large audiences – up to 115 000 one day in October 1988 at The Chronicle and 129 500 at The Daily News in June 2000. Given a choice, therefore, between the less than 10 000 readers of The Daily News and 40 000 at The Herald today, that decision would not be difficult, as anybody with a modicum of common sense will readily appreciate.
I always make the point that after my former Daily News reduced the circulation of The Herald from more than 160 000 to a little over 50 000 in 2000, the new Daily News and NewsDay have effectively conspired since 2011 to restore The Herald to its former pole position as Zimbabwe’s largest selling newspaper, while they hover around 10 000 each.
Incidentally, the gap between The Herald and its two rivals has little to do with the parlous state of Zimbabwe’s economic situation or the challenge posed by online news platforms.
It is this lacklustre performance on their part which has resulted in some newspapers to adopt dangerously creative strategies in their bid to attract readers. But, as has now become quite apparent such tactics can backfire, because newspaper readers are not fools, contrary to the misplaced opinion of some newspaper editors.
Mr Gama is, of course, correct in his assertion that readers who are familiar with the fact that I am the founding editor of The Daily News will have found it curious that he now finds it fitting to refer to me as a State media correspondent on the basis of a few columns published in The Herald while totally disregarding my illustrious career over 37 years as ground-breaking editor of The Chronicle and founding editor of The Daily News.
Mr Gama may have written in anger but it certainly is by no means criminal for any journalist to contribute to The Herald, especially these days when the merits or demerits of the various daily newspapers are debatable in much the same way the values of the political parties that they supposedly support are now equally debatable.
Incidentally, I am a columnist on The Herald. Columnists contribute articles which are an expression of their own opinions while correspondents file hard news articles.
Mr Gama expresses the opinion that it was an innocuous occurrence that his predecessor as editor of The Daily News, the good Mr John Gambanga, published my picture and name under the headline “We are back” instead of publishing his own name and picture to announce the fact that he was now the new editor of The Daily News.
In a meeting with me soon after he published this aberration Mr G?mbang?, one of Zimbabwe’s foremost journalists, admitted to me that what he had done was both wrong and unethical. He gave an undertaking to publish a correction. The publishers of the newspaper, or Johannesburg-based CEO, Mr Jethro Goko to be precise, refused to have the correction published.
Mr Gambanga, who made the correct professional decision to publish a correction so that ANZ would not benefit from a deliberate misrepresentation of who was editor on The Daily News, was himself fired soon afterwards. Mr Gama then appeared on the scene.
Mr Gama seems to believe that it is an innocuous occurrence for ANZ to seek to reap in March 2011 where they refused to sow when they fired me unlawfully from The Daily News in May 2010. Sadly, the officials at the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe failed to comprehend the essence of the issue here and the matter remains in abeyance to date.
Mr Gama then makes further statements about my relationship with The Daily News up to the time of my second dismissal from the paper in May 2010. They include utterances such as, “his supposed dismissal from the newspaper in 2010”, and “his spurious claims that ANZ ever wanted to employ him beyond a temporary consultancy when it assisted him, at his express request, to come back from the US to Zimbabwe in 2010”. These statements are gross misrepresentations which are in essence defamatory of me.
Mr Gama and Daily News readers will find the following revelation enlightening. Mr Goko wrote to me on August 12, 2009 and made the following proposal: “The first important issue for me is our desire to use The Zimbabwe Times (my US-based) website as the immediate springboard for the re-launch of the print editions of The Daily News. Mindful of the discussion we had when we met in Johannesburg earlier this year, I have scrounged around and can put up to $40 000 on the table for this project immediately.”
I immediately put it to Mr Goko that the value of my website could not be determined on the basis of the outcome of his scrounging around for money in Johannesburg. The evaluation had to be more realistic than that. We finally agreed on the figure of $60 000, which ANZ paid me for the acquisition of The Zimbabwe Times website.
“While it could arguably be cheaper for ANZ to re-launch its website from scratch,” he continued, “we are all agreed that there is tremendous value in building up on what you started.
“The second strategic issue that I want to put on the table is your formal role within ANZ. As discussed previously, I have been mulling over a position that straddles both general management and editorial – but I am open to suggestions and discussions.
“The fact is that you founded The Daily News and people associate you with the paper . . . To that extent it is only proper that you, among other things, work in a role that allows you to be the public face of the newspaper as we re-launch it, support both management and editorial as we embark on this journey, advise on critical courses of action, lead our digital charge, write dedicated columns and blogs (because as I said before, people care about what Geoff says), and be intimately involved in the training and nurturing of young and upcoming journalists.”
Mr Goko was unequivocal in his vision of the future relationship between The Daily News and myself and it is quite clear that it is this vision that influenced the crafting of the headline “We are back!” two years later. Unfortunately, Mr Goko made the grievous mistake of firing me on May 27 2010, a day after The Daily News was registered by Government on May 26, 2010, and ANZ now has to pay heavily for his strange decision, as the case now stands.
With regard to Mr Gama’s simplistic testimony about the case surrounding my unlawful dismissal from The Daily News he states that “the Labour Court recently threw out with costs, his spurious claims that ANZ ever wanted to employ him beyond a temporary consultancy, when it assisted him, at his express request, to come back from the US to Zimbabwe in 2010”.
Given the actual circumstances of my relocation to Zimbabwe by ANZ as outlined above this statement is painful to me. It is defamatory. The statement is a radical departure from the truth as intended and communicated to me by Mr Goko in 2009 and outlined above.
With the regard to the case between ANZ and myself, the arbitrator, Mr John T. Mawire, ruled on August 2, 2011, inter alia, that I actually had a 12-month contract with ANZ, that the aforesaid contract was unlawfully terminated by the company and that I was, therefore, entitled to compensation as a result.
In a subsequent determination issued on February 24, 2012, Mr Mawire quantified the arbitral award in my favour at $90 921,00 and that ANZ would pay the full costs of the arbitration.
After a lengthy delay of more than three years the application for registration of the arbitral award was granted with full costs by Justice J. Muremba of the High Court on July 1, 2015.
ANZ appealed to the Supreme Court on July 7, 2015, against Justice Muremba’s judgment. The case is now due to be heard there.
To be continued
Geoffrey Nyarota is former editor of The Chronicle and The Daily News, and chairman of the Information and Media Panel of Inquiry.
Online Reporter