The litmus test

Perspective Stephen Mpofu
A wave of euphoria sweeping through the journalism fraternity is understandable, justified as it is by a sense of relief that, at long last, journalists are about to be protected in their noble profession from relentless pursuits, as if they were quarry, by hunters of quick and easy money dragging the watchdogs of society to court claiming that their esteem has been lowered in the eyes of reasonable people by stories published in the print and electronic media.

The joy in the newsroom comes in the wake of an announcement by the Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, Professor Jonathan Moyo, that the Government would strike off criminal defamation from the statutes to protect the scribes in conformity with the new constitution that guarantees freedom of expression and freedom of media.

Unions that represent journalists have hailed the impending abolition of criminal defamation as a move in the right direction.
Reforming the law will however be accompanied with a high premium in the form of a litmus test of responsibility on both sides of the scale so that the pendulum should not tilt in favour of either side. In other words, there should be no losers or winners when criminal defamation ceases to exist.

In the present circumstances, it is probably no exaggeration to suggest that a dog-eat-dog relationship exists in high-profile readers of their product in particular.

Journalists in countries that uphold criminal defamation are known to have taken a dig at some leaders for reading newspapers not for employment with information but to look for stories that they believe harm their personal integrity in order for them to drag the writers to court claiming they have been criminally defamed as a way of seeking reparation.

Indeed, journalists have gone to the extent of dramatising the situation by claiming that some busy leaders hire people to read stories for them in newspapers in particular, stories that they claim criminally defame the leaders in question.

What the abolition of criminal defamation should usher in for Zimbabwe is a high level of responsibility on the sides of both the journalists plying their trade as informers and the newsmakers as responsible citizens in every aspect of their public lives.

Yet criminal defamation has been described by unions representing journalists as criminalising the noble profession without which no country can hope to grow not to mention promoting democratic tenets.

Zimbabwe Union of Journalists vice-president, Mike Chideme celebrated the impending repeal of the draconian law, saying the union has been campaigning against the law that he said had done a lot of damage to the image of the country by portraying it as being anti-journalists.

He said abolishing criminal defamation would promote Press freedom, while a senior local journalist, Njabulo Ncube representing the Media Institute of Southern Africa charged that criminal defamation promoted self-censorship, thereby depriving the public of the right to information that was vital for people’s empowerment.

But, of course, it must also be acknowledged that dangerous elements do exist in the journalism profession who willfully seek to vilify their perceived enemies especially in officialdom by publishing reports that are damaging while hiding under the cover of publish-and-be-damned which actually relates to publishing a story based on truthful facts and for the public good, whatever the consequences might be.
In the final analysis, therefore, responsible journalism should redeem professionals from any criticism for willful vengeance against personalities with whom they might be at daggers drawn.

This also means that journalists should refuse to be used by leaders who might wish to deploy the press as a tool with which to fight personal battles with rivals in politics as well as other spheres of life.

In other words, a let-sleeping-dogs-lie general policy should prevail between news makers and writers as both pursue the important task of empowering publics of or social, economic and political development of the only motherland that Zimbabweans can call home sweet home.