Insiderzim
26 May 2010
I was baffled when I read the following headline on the internet:Â Donors Shun Zimbabwe Media Commission. The question that immediately came to my mind was: “Why would anyone expect donors to fund Zimbabwe’s Media Commission?” This was a government commission. Shouldn’t it be funded by the government?
The fact that a journalist sat down and wrote a story like this, clearly demonstrates how the donor mentality has pervaded our media and society. This skewered thinking is no different from the one that prevailed when the Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) was the ruling party. People looked up to the government to provide solutions to all their problems, resulting in what became the Dai Hurumende syndrome. Sadly, the government pretended it could solve any problem though it did not have any money. Look where that landed us.
Now there seems to be a belief that donors have all the answers to Zimbabwe’s problems. The government expected donors to come rushing to their aid saying they needed $15 billion for the country’s economic recovery programme. We are now 15 months under the inclusive government but there is no sign we can even get 10 percent of that money. Even relief aid has dried up.
Education Minister David Coltart summed it all when he said donors now regarded Zimbabwe as a bottomless pit. But no one seems to have heard his comments. Donors, like any other sensible investor, will not invest in anything where there is no return. It is as simple as that. Even in Shona, we have a saying that chindiro chinopfumba kunobva chimwe. A good turn deserves another. The sooner we realize that we are on our own, the sooner we can turn our country around.
Donors poured in a lot of money into Zimbabwe’s media over the past decade. It was a worthwhile investment, for them and not necessarily for Zimbabwe as a whole. Now they have started pulling out. The inclusive government which has brought sanity back to the country, though there are still political problems here and there, seems to have changed all that. ZWNews, suspended services last year but when Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai temporarily pulled out the government, they received new funding. It dried up again at the end of March.
The Institute for War and Peace Reporting which has been publishing stories about Zimbabwe under pseudonyms claiming that it was protecting its writers because of the harsh media laws in Zimbabwe is also looking for funds. The Prime Minister’s newsletter has also ceased publication.
At first sight it looks like Zimbabwe is losing. Sources of news are shrinking. But anyone who has studied the media in Zimbabwe will tell you that donors did a lot of damage to the media over the past decade. They supported publications which broke all the rules of basic journalism. Some carried stories that were completely false but got away with it. The publications promoted name-bashing without any proof of what they were reporting, all in the name of press freedom.
One international organization even had the audacity to write that “as recently as March 2010, journalists in Zimbabwe have been arrested for covering peaceful protest marches, writing articles about internal ZANU-PF politics, reporting on regional economic conferences, or discussing Zimbabwe’s land policy.”
What a load of crap! Such generalisations make life more difficult for honest Zimbabwean journalists who are trying to carry out their job. Donors have brought about a new kind of journalism- asylum or attention seeking journalism.
Journalists, and pretenders, who cannot raise money for plane or bus tickets, or for visas, simply write fabrications that will land them in trouble, cry foul and they are bailed out of the country. Some have even won awards but no one can cite a single that they wrote.
This has done a great deal of damage to the profession. While the media should be the watchdog for society, it is scaring people out of their wits half the time. There is a breed of journalists who do not believe Zimbabweans can do anything for themselves except flee the country and hope that donors will come to the rescue.
It has also created a distorted view about what propaganda is. A journalist working for the Herald or the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, for example, leaves his or her job because he or she does not want to work for a propaganda organization only to join Voice of America. What nonsense is this?
At least, it is a known fact that Zimbabwe Newspapers, publishers of the Herald and the Chronicle have always supported the government of the day even in pre-colonial era. That has been the same with the ZBC. I am not saying this is right, but that is the fact.
Voice of America which claims to be “a trusted source of news and information since 1942” is on the other hand a propaganda organ. It was specifically created for propaganda purposes.
The propaganda is so “dangerous” that VOA is by law- the Smith-Mundt Act- not allowed to broadcast that propaganda to American citizens. Yet someone stands up to claim that it is objective.
Section 501 of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948,which still applies today, says: “Information produced by the Voice of America shall not be disseminated within the United States … but, on request, shall be available in the English language at VOA, at all reasonable times following its release as information abroad, for examination only by representatives of United States press associations, newspapers, magazines, radio systems, and stations, and by research students and scholars and, on request, shall be made available for examination only to Members of Congress.”
Of course this has all been made irrelevant by the internet. But the law still stands. One hopes therefore that when the Zimbabwe Media Commission starts to function it will bring sanity back to the media.