ZIMBABWE: Access to state media allegedly skewed

JOHANNESBURG, 9 Mar 2005 (IRIN) - In the run-up to Zimbabwe's legislative elections, access to public media remains skewed in favour of the ruling ZANU-PF, according to media watchdogs.

Media freedom lobby group Reporters sans Frontieres (Paris) alleged in a statement, "... the coverage that Zimbabwe's state media are giving the main opposition party during the campaign for parliamentary elections on 31 March is clearly unfair".

"With the election campaign already officially under way, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - the main opposition party, with 50 representatives in parliament - is extremely handicapped by the lack of coverage it is getting from the state media, when not being actively disparaged," the press freedom organisation noted.

The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ), an independent Harare-based watchdog, reported that in the official press during the week of 14 to 20 February, 19 of 28 articles about the election campaigns defended the ruling ZANU-PF party, while the other nine disparaged the MDC. During the week of 21 to 27 February, 58 of 66 articles covering the election campaigns were devoted to ZANU-PF.

Nhlanhla Ngwenya, a monitoring coordinator of the MMPZ, told IRIN that "access to state [public] media remains limited for opposition parties, although they [state media] are trying to show they are giving space to the opposition".

"Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings [state media company] initially claimed they would not cover the MDC, as it had not confirmed whether it would participate in the elections. Then their excuse was that we were not yet in an election period [so state media was not obliged to provide airtime to the MDC]. But according to legislation, our election period begins 30 days prior to the actual polling day - this means the election period began on 26 February," Ngwenya said.

State broadcasters have since said they would cover all the political parties fairly and in a balanced manner, and have "managed to give the MDC space to broadcast its manifesto - 12 minutes on national television - and have given them equal time on [public] radio stations; the independent candidates been given five minutes to broadcast their manifestos".

However, Ngwenya said, "while giving them [opposition parties] space to air their promises to the electorate, they are taking advantage of the fact that regulations [governing election broadcasts] are silent on news coverage of parties".

"They have just continued giving more airtime to the ruling party than any other contesting party - almost every week, average coverage of ZANU-PF in state media is about 80 percent. The rest share the remaining 20 percent [of political party coverage]. The little airtime accorded to MDC - around 12 percent on a weekly basis - is mostly devoted to portraying the party in a negative light," Ngwenya pointed out.

Smaller parties such as ZANU (Ndonga), when covered at all, have also suffered negative coverage.

[ENDS]