In statement yesterday, Government said such a brazen piece
of fake news and yellow journalism had no place in the country ahead of the
harmonised elections next month.
The statement followed the publication of a front page
article titled; “Zanu ropes in Moza militia” wherein the paper falsely claimed
a Mozambican militia group had been deployed to the Chipinge area at the
invitation of the Government to coerce people to vote for the ruling Zanu PF
party.
The Deputy Chief Secretary, Presidential Communications in
the Office of the President and Cabinet Mr George Charamba said the article was
timed to raise political temperatures in the country as it prepared for
harmonised elections, and to deliberately impugn long-standing bilateral
relations with the neighbouring sister Republic of Mozambique.
Mr Charamba said the piece of brazen fake news shows what
becomes of journalism when a discredited publisher, backed by an unprofessional
editorial team, prefers political partisanship to media ethics.
“Nothing in Section 61 of our hallowed Constitution
protects or condones the publishing of such reckless, politically motivated
falsehoods,” he said.
“We thus hope and expect that the Zimbabwe Media Commission
(ZMC), takes a clear and bold position against this flagrant abuse of media
freedoms whose impact on national security, and on inter-state relations, are
dire and injurious respectively.
“That the article repeatedly and self-consciously used the
adverb ‘reportedly’, clearly shows deliberate, gratuitous malice, and a
conscious decision to proceed to publish falsehoods regardless, as if to
wilfully spite rules of the craft.
“So, too, does the tabloid paper’s decision to proceed on
the basis of some spurious video clip anonymously placed and circulated on the
social media.
“The intentions of the video are clear, namely to stir
hostilities and to harm harmonious relations between communities on either side
of our common border with the sister Republic of Mozambique.
“Zanu PF, itself the Party of Liberation campaigning on a
solid record of countrywide delivery, needs not do anything to violate
Zimbabwe’s territorial integrity, including enlisting the support of security
arms of a foreign country for its election campaign whose momentum and success
on the ground is self-evident,” said Mr Charamba.
He said Government was demanding an immediate public
apology from Alpha Media Holdings, publishers of NewsDay, and an unconditional
retraction of the offensive article by the newspaper.
He said Government further expected the apology and
retraction to have the same prominence as the offending article.
“Failure to publicly apologise, and to retract as demanded
and on terms outlined above, automatically invites the injured parties, who
include Government, to pursue and seek redress through legal options which are
available to them,” Mr Charamba said.
“As Government voices its protest against such reckless,
fringe journalism, it continues to urge the mainstream media to show the way by
upholding tenets of professional journalism in the country, especially now as
we go through the last stretch of our election campaign programme which, to
date, has been remarkably free, fair and peaceful. Nothing must be allowed to
wreck our hard-won national peace.” Herald
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