HARARE - Officials linked to President Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF party
and central bank chief Gideon Gono still enjoy unfettered publicity from the
country's public media two months after formation of an inclusive
government, a media monitoring organisation has said.
In its weekly media report, the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe
(MMPZ) said people "linked to ZANU PF" continued to indulge in "abuse of
public media", citing the Herald's recent reproduction of comments made by
Gono during the era when ZANU PF used to rule the country alone.
"Nothing more clearly illustrates the continued abuse of public media
by senior government officials linked to ZANU PF than the Herald's coverage
of the Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono's address to parliamentarians
during which he defended his quasi-fiscal policies that were partly to blame
for the country's economic collapse," MMPZ said.
"Instead of critically examining his statements, the paper (Herald)
published stories between Friday April 3 and Wednesday April 8 2009 merely
regurgitating his justification of discredited activities during ZANU PF
government reign."
The media body said although the daily supinely reported Gono as
having dismissed private media reports that he had run a parallel government
prior to the formation of the inclusive government on February 11, there was
no attempt to unmask Gono's statements of dishonesty when he diverted funds
meant to assist the Global Fund.
"There was no attempt to relate dishonest statements to documented
evidence of his abuse of money from Global Fund and his raids on foreign
currency accounts belonging to exporters and NGOs among other irregular
activities," MMPZ said.
"Neither did the paper seek independent corroboration of merely
executing his mandate as stipulated by law governing operations of the
central bank."
The problem was not confined to the Herald alone, MMPZ said as this
also spilled over to the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation's (ZBC) SpotFM
which changed its mid-morning programming to accommodate the live broadcast
of Gono's more than one-and-half-hour long address, which it repeated the
same evening.
"It is such blatant abuse of the public media that vindicates calls
for urgent media law reforms that would help Zimbabweans to reclaim public
media so as to ensure that they fully adhere to their mandate of serving the
interests of all citizens."
Zimbabwe's power-sharing government early this month undertook to open
up the media to more players within the next 100 days, agreeing to reform
Zimbabwe's restrictive media regulatory environment so as to ensure press
freedom.
State Minister Gorden Moyo told reporters after a ministerial retreat
in Victoria Falls that government had "resolved that the media laws be
reformed and that space be provided for more players".
"We are expecting that we will have a new media commission which will
oversee serious steps toward freeing the airwaves in terms of licensing TV
and radio stations and allowing other players from outside to come and
broadcast from Zimbabwe," said Moyo.
Government-controlled newspapers are the biggest and most dominant in
Zimbabwe after Mugabe's government banned four privately owned newspapers
including the Daily News, which was the largest circulating daily at its
forced closure in 2003.
There are no independent broadcasters in Zimbabwe. The state-owned ZBC
runs the country's only television and radio stations, all tightly
controlled by government, which has the final say on senior editorial and
managerial appointments.
The southern African country has some of the toughest media laws in
the world. For example, the government's Access to Information and
Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) requires journalists to obtain licences
from the government's Media and Information Commission in order to practise
in Zimbabwe.
The commission can withdraw licences from journalists who fail to
conform. Journalists caught practising without a licence are liable to a
two-year jail term under AIPPA.
Besides journalists being required to obtain licences, newspaper
companies are also required to register with the state commission with those
failing to do so facing closure and seizure of their equipment by the
police.
Former opposition leader and now Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and
Mugabe formed a power sharing government in February to rescue Zimbabwe's
ruined economy and work to end a humanitarian crisis manifested in deepening
poverty and disease.
Article 19 of the power-sharing agreement signed in September by
Zimbabwe's major political parties acknowledges the need for a free and
diverse media environment.
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