Media standards falling says watchdog

Journalism standards appear to be the latest victim of Zimbabwe's hotly contested presidential election, according to an independent media watchdog.

In its latest report released on Thursday, the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ) said: "Public media organisations are clearly the worst offenders in the manufacture of unsubstantiated stories, but recent developments suggest the contagion may have started to affect the privately owned press too."

It noted: "The widespread use of unidentified 'sources' to provide credibility for unsubstantiated, inaccurate and often inflammatory stories about individuals and organisations, even in circumstances where such anonymity is unwarranted, amounts to a clear abuse of practice."

MMPZ said examples abound in the public media, clearly aimed at tarnishing the image of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The unsubstantiated reports include "the ongoing 'MDC anthrax terror' stories, MDC 'killer houses' and more recently (in the week under review) the claim that the 'MDC plans war' after the election.

"In none of these stories has there ever been any substantiation of the central 'facts' upon which these stories are based, and in the anthrax stories anthrax has never been identified as ever being present," the media group said, in reference to fraudulent reports that an anthrax contaminated letter had been addressed to the minister of state for information.

"While it is expected that the public media will remain slaves to government propaganda, at least for the duration of the presidential election campaign, MMPZ calls on all media organisations to desist from the practise of publishing or broadcasting unsubstantiated allegations and to restore to their newsrooms the internationally accepted standards of ethical journalistic practice," the organisation said.

In politically polarised Zimbabwe, there is only one independent daily, the Daily News, but it is the biggest selling newspaper. However, the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation enjoys an effective monopoly of radio and television news production.