adminexpense of playing a big hand in the development of football.
Eddie “Mboma” Nyatanga, the ZNSSA leader, said his organisation had also noted for some time, with concern, about the way some sections of the media have turned themselves into platforms for savaging characters of the leadership of domestic football.
Zifa boss Dube said a toxic environment, poisoned by the media’s preference for negative stuff at the expense of developmental issues, was hampering their efforts to help Zimbabwe football take a giant step forward.
The Harare business executive said the media had a huge role to build, and not to be used as destroyers, of local football and a rabid local media, which focuses on negative material, a lot of it coloured by falsehoods, was derailing their efforts to turn around the game.
Dube singled out the Real Soccer website, run by its Editor and publisher Shepherd Mandizvidza, as having championed a crusade to paint everything to do with Zifa, in general, and himself, in particular, with a dark brush.
Yesterday ZNSSA leader Nyatanga said they were in full support of Dube and believed that the media was not playing its big role in taking football a step forward.
“The Zifa president is absolutely right and we have been watching and seeing how our own media, which is supposed to build our football, has been turned into a battle ground where people fight their politics at the expense of highlighting the development issues that are there in the game,” said Nyatanga.
“It’s very disappointing because without a supportive media, football cannot grow, as leaders we can do as much as we can but our efforts will be in vain because it just needs two very bad articles to poison the environment and scare away the sponsors that we are trying very hard to bring into the game.
“We are not saying that the media should be praise singers, far from that because if the journalists don’t hold us accountable then they are also not serving the public and that is very bad, but for them to manufacture stories, which don’t exist, and spread them as the gospel truth, all in the name of destroying people’s characters, is very unfortunate.
“For these journalists to put all their efforts into that, concentrating only on that which is negative and, most of the times even creating the stories based on either pub talk or flea market gossip and then sell them to the public as factual stories, is wrong.
“We have some issues that we want clarification from Zifa and one of them is why the audited financial statements were not presented at their Council meeting and why, even up to now, we haven’t seen those statements.
“These are issues we expect the media to tackle because they are factual and they help the game but what we have right now is just a wild chase of gossip, speculation and lies that are being packaged as news items and distributed to the public.”
Nyatanga said ZNSSA had serious issues with Real Soccer, claiming those who run the website had also gone on a wild adventure to tarnish their images in the past few years.
“While the Zifa president appears to be talking about articles, which have damaged his reputation, which have been published this year, some of us have been on the hit list, being savaged left, right and centre, with news items that were not backed by facts, for the last four years from the same website,” said Nyatanga.
“It’s been horrible and you wonder what is our football coming to, is this what journalism is all about and what does this do to help our football?
“You read stories about having been seen in Bulawayo when you are in Harare and have not been to Bulawayo for months, it’s incredible, anything goes, as long as it attacks the character of Mboma or Giant Bgwoni it’s okay.’
Dube has launched a defamation suit on the website and its Editor and publisher, Shepherd Mandizvidza.
The football website has published a number of articles in the past few months claiming that Dube was the “Undertaker of Zimbabwe football” and makes allegations that the Zifa president allegedly
“bribed” a Fifa official and was also paying questionable amounts to councillors.
“When you undertake to serve in a public office, like football, you know that you will be criticised at some point because that is the nature of the office and the game,” said Dube.
“But the least that you expect is that the criticism should be based on the truth, on facts, so that it helps us also grow and make the organisation that we are serving better.
“Unfortunately, what we are getting is a section of a media that has thrown away all its principles and does not subscribe to the ethics that govern it and you have one article after another, especially on the Real Soccer website, which does not carry even a grain of truth and is meant to cause maximum possible damage to my reputation.
“I have kept quiet for some time now, thinking that this thing will die down and those who are doing that will realise that what they are doing is wrong, but I have seen that my silence has been wrongly interpreted to suggest that I’m wrong and what they have been writing is right.
Online Reporter