Speaking at a workshop held for journalists in Chinhoyi
last week, Dr Qubani Moyo, a ZEC commissioner said that the State media was
being unfair to opposition parties by giving too much coverage to Zanu PF.
Dr Moyo who is the ZEC spokesperson was presenting a paper
on Electoral Dispute Resolution and one of the major disputes has been
inequitable media coverage.
Dr Moyo said because of the skewed coverage, ZEC was inundated
by complaints from different quarters. He said while it happens all over the
world that sitting Governments receive more coverage, this should not be at the
expense of opposition parties.
Asked by one of the journalists attending the workshop on
what ZEC is doing about the problem, Dr Moyo said the Commission’s mandate to
monitor the media only starts when the President promulgates the elections.
Outside that period ZEC cannot do anything, he said.
He however, said that ZEC was going to engage the Zimbabwe
Media Commission and the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe over the matter.
Patience Zirima who heads an NGO involved in media
monitoring concurred with Moyo and said that the State media which is mainly
ZBC and Zimpapers are in contravention of the Constitution of Zimbabwe when
they sideline opposition parties in their coverage.
“The public broadcaster stands guilty of giving too much
space to the ruling party, not only in Zimbabwe but in most countries. There
should be fair coverage of all political parties during the election period. We
have witnessed situations where some political players are very thin on content
and lack personnel to tackle issues in the media even if they get the opportunity,
all the same we call upon fair coverage of all players.
“In 2018 the public media was very much biased towards Zanu
PF and we had serious problems with that as we received so many complaints from
stakeholders,” said Dr Moyo.
“There was a lot of bias towards Zanu PF in 2018. The
ruling party got 90% of the coverage while opposition parties only got 10%.
This is problematic because the Constitution says public media must report in a
fair and equitable manner.
“Women’s voices were also much lower although this could be
attributed to the low number of women who participated as candidates in the
2018 elections. Going forward in 2023 we hope to see increased plurality,
diversity of coverage of the different groups and political parties in the
country and this will provide an environment that is much fairer and
equitable,” said Zirima. Masvingo Mirror
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