Media should reform itself

publications which his party has for long dined with.
The premier was reportedly incensed by a report in a recent Daily News publication headlined “Mugabe wants war: Tsvangirai” which contained comments he said were falsely attributed to him.
Addressing a prayer meeting recently organised by the Zimbabwe Council of Churches at Mucheke Stadium in Masvingo, Tsvangirai did not mince his words but lambasted the paper for sensationalising news stories.
Waving the copy of the Daily News, he was quoted saying that: “We want peace to prevail in the country, but we have problems with some newspaper that writes misleading and inaccurate stories. There is a story that claims I said President Mugabe wants war. I never said that, it is not true.”
Surely the premier has seen the light. It has dawned upon the “democratic leader” that the media’s errant and unprofessional conduct continues to contribute towards the disintegration of the country’s political fabric. This is what Zanu-PF has always been saying. The party had consistently maintained that the so-called private and pirate media were publishing falsehoods and hate speech against the country.
Notably, the Daily News has religiously been the problem child. In April 2002, the Daily News made headlines for notoriously publishing a completely false story claiming that 20 Zanu-PF youths had beheaded a 53-year-old Magunje woman, Brandina Tadyenemhandu, in front of her two daughters aged 10 and 17.
The ignominious story written by Lloyd Mudiwa was shrewdly designed to paint a false and grim picture of violence and lawlessness immediately after the country’s election in 2000. The concocted story was meant to prop up the MDC-T party which was smarting from a resounding defeat by Zanu-PF.
The same publication had its operating licence revoked by Government in 2003 after its publishers wantonly refused to register its operations in accordance with the law.
Its decadent behaviour is reflective of similar conduct by other private and pirate publications that continue to unrestrainedly concoct and spew negative stories against the Government and its people-centred policies.
Their publications are patently and unflinchingly anti-government. They piously report negatively against the land reform programme, indigenisation and empowerment programme and the mining of Chiadzwa diamonds among other people-centred programmes.
The vilification of the Government and country is their avowed mission. The rot in the media fraternity is inordinately evident as vouched for by reports indicating that some media stables are perennially haunted by tribalism. Worse still, some delinquent media publications are adamantly refusing to legally register their operations as required by the law.
Presently, the Sunday Times of South Africa is freely distributed yet its publishers are refusing to register the paper in line with the law. Similarly, a plethora of pirate radio stations are beaming their hate-filled programmes into Zimbabwe without meeting the country’s legal requirements.
Such decadent conduct had understandably jolted the Government to come up with legislations like AIPPA to try to thwart the rabid conduct by the media. But as rightly observed by Tsvangirai, the legislations have admittedly failed to stem the media’s unbecoming conduct.
It is, however, perplexing that in view of the media’s errant behaviour and the media laws’ shortcomings;, the MDC-T together with their ilk continues to stridently call for the repeal of these media laws and clamour for the self regulation of the media.
Interestingly, where is the Voluntary Media Monitoring Council of Zimbabwe (VMMCZ) when its members keep on publishing outright lies and media practitioners remain entrapped in unethical conduct? What has this supposedly self-regulating body done to deal with the Premier’s current complaint against the Daily News?
It is plainly uncontestable that self regulation is not practical. What we need is not media reform in the sense of the regime change mantra but a clinical reformation of the media’s wayward conduct. The media should simply subject itself to the dictates of ethics and the law.

l Tendai Moyo is a Harare based social                          commentator.