Most Zimbabwean Journalists Have "Resisted", "Rebelled"

By Dr. Winston Mano, Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster, UK

Zimbabwean news media are increasingly becoming an antidemocratic force owing to the political, economic and professional problems that are continuously bedeviling the profession of journalism in the country. Public and private media owners have created "regimes" that undermine professional and ethical roles of journalists. What is even more troubling is that the country's journalists have resigned themselves to these developments, seeing them as "normal", and finding it natural that they have to adjust their professional roles to suit the new environment.

Whilst the journalist cannot take all the blame, the state and media proprietors are publicly mandated to promote and uphold the highest standards of professional journalism. This means that levels of remuneration and benefits must not be used to defeat professional journalism and ethics.

However, (...) far from being docile victims of the hostile media environment developing in the country, most Zimbabwean journalists have "resisted", "rebelled" and are developing sophisticated ways of negotiating the pressures exerted on them by private and public media proprietors. My argument is that free and open media practices are important for democratic processes to fully take root in Zimbabwe. (...)

Zimbabwean journalists are "often coerced to change their stories and suppress or fabricate 'facts'" in their news stories. In private and public newsrooms it is also the case that editors "may arbitrarily rewrite reporter' stories and delete crucial facts without telling the reporter, and yet still attach the reporter's by-line to the now unrecognizable product" (Media Professionalism and Ethics 2002, xii). Needless to say such practices undermine professionalism and freedom of the news media. Without adequate job security, Zimbabwean journalists tend to follow the whims of the editors, who themselves are at the mercy of media proprietors.

According to my research findings, media watchdogs offer little or no protection, especially to journalists harassed by private media. The journalists' unions or laws in the country offer inadequate protection to Zimbabwean journalists. (...)

In response to my question of what needs to be done to create press freedom and more professionalism, respondents advocated a collective form of action based on a genuine need to resolve problems common to the profession. (...)

In the end, both private and public media were perceived to be enemies of professionalism and press freedom. Only by coming up with a common strategy could journalists negotiate the professional hazards that they faced. Respondents felt that Zimbabwean journalism could re-attain its professional status by fighting for legal reform, government withdrawal from the business of newspapers and for better training of journalists.

My research has attempted to go beyond the existing public and private media divide in Zimbabwe by exploring the interplay between press freedom, professionalism and proprietorship in journalism. Although the analysis was based on interviews with a few journalists, it nonetheless sheds light on the pressures and general challenges being faced by Zimbabwean journalists. Both the state-controlled and privately-owned media presented journalists with constrained work environments. Independent investigative journalism was next to impossible. For the most part, it seemed that for the Zimbabwean journalist: "The most effective way to avoid pressure is to cooperate with those who can exert it; and journalists often cooperate with the powerful, even if not solely to ward off pressure" (Gans 1980, 270). The market, as Curran (2002, 225) reminds us, does not "guarantee critical scrutiny of either public or private power". Similarly, the state also subjects both market and public media to "compromising restraint". In both cases, professionalism, that is journalism in the service of the public interest, is seriously undermined. Zimbabwean journalists need to be more aware of these constraints and develop more effective ways of managing conflict between their professional norms and proprietor-driven pressures.

Lastly, given the plethora of challenges faced by Zimbabwean journalists (especially, low pay, dismissals and victimization), it is very difficult for them, and the media on the whole, to play meaningful roles in the country's democratic process. Ironically, it was Jonathan Moyo (1993, 13), before he became a Zimbabwean cabinet minister responsible for information, who recognized that "democracy cannot exist in an environment where violence and fear dominate the political process" and that something ought to be done to rectify this. Zimbabwe is a democratizing country where the media have a crucial role to play at every stage.

Media proprietors need to safeguard professional journalism and press freedom by helping to create an enabling environment. Zimbabwe media owners, both public and private, need to offer journalists a secure and stable atmosphere that engenders the development of professional journalism and democracy in Zimbabwe. Without "media democracy" there cannot be "democracy" in Zimbabwe. Media and democracy are not, and cannot be mutually exclusive.

Source: http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/pdf/zim_art4.pdf

References:

Curran, J. (2002) Media and Power, Routledge: London and New York.
Gans, H.J. (1980) Deciding What's News: A study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News.
Moyo, J.N. (1993) "Civil Society in Zimbabwe" in Zambezia, XX (i): 1-14.
Newsweek and Time, London: Constable.