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The Media

The four radio stations and one television station in Zimbabwe are all state owned and are managed by Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings. The only privately owned newspapers are expensive weeklies in - The Independent, The Standard and The Financial Gazette. No foreign journalists have official accreditation to work inside the country.

Nevertheless, new media technologies such as blogging and text messaging are succeeding in publishing trustworthy stories for local and global audiences, defying state media control. Such efforts may however come under threat from the new Interception of Communications Act which, subject to obtaining a warrant, enables the authorities to eavesdrop on electronic and telephone communication.

The innocently named "Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act" makes it illegal for any foreign journalist to be based in Zimbabwe. It also says that any journalist who reports without the approval of a government-appointed commission can be sentenced to up to two years in prison.

When the Zimbabwean authorities can identify people who have spoken to the foreign or independent media, they are prepared to go after them, and punish them.

Zimbabwe's information minister, Jonathan Moyo, says "this kind of legislation is the norm worldwide", but the intention of this legislation is to get Zimbabwe off our television screens, and radios, and newspapers, and minimise the government's embarrassment.

The editor of The Standard, the country's only remaining independent Sunday newspaper, Davison Maruziva, has been hauled before the courts for publishing a letter written by an opposition politician. Media analysts say the stage is being set for the closure of its sister publication, The Zimbabwe Independent.

Many journalists have fled in exile from Zimbabwe to the US or UK and all British journalists are banned from entering the counrty. Mugabe sees journalists are the political wing of the MDC - think Germany in the 1930s...
 

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