Alternative Dispute Resolution Systems in the Zimbabwean media industry and the debate on self-regulation (original) (raw)
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The current political and media policy framework in the country has resulted in Zimbabwe ranking among the few most dangerous countries to practise journalism in. Reporters Sans Frontieres (2008 Press Freedom Index) state that: "Being a journalist in ... Zimbabwe (151st) - is a high risk exercise involving endless frustration and constant police and judicial harassment". Journalists continue to be harassed, arrested, tortured and unlawfully detained. This paper explores the emergence of policy elites and their role in influencing the evolution of media legislative policy framework that has been emerging in Zimbabwe since 2000. It considers how the bipolar political contestations between the two dominant political formations in the country polarised the policy-making environment with resultant problems sharply manifesting themselves in the way the media operated and related to the rest of society. The media laws that get passed from around 2001 were themselves a product of a political process deeply divided. This discussion focuses on the ideological contestations among different elites at such institutions as the University of Zimbabwe faculty of Media and Communication Studies and the Department of Mass Communications at Zimbabwe Polytechnic College, as they co-opted and were co-opted with other elites in government bureaucracies, media professions councils and other intellectuals in diverse fields of expertise to set different and at times conflictual agendas for media reform in the country. The paper employs Alford’s schema of Dominant, Challenging and Repressed interests to analyse various actors as they competed to determine and drive the ongoing media reform process in Zimbabwe. Over the past decade there has emerged three major elite coalition tendencies vis-à-vis media policy making in Zimbabwe. There emerged a clearly pro-regime policy lobby crystallising in the Media Ethics Commission set up by government in 2001 and a pro-libertarian coalition of media interest groups that congeal in the form of the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe. The paper seeks to establish the extent to which the policy-making process in Zimbabwe can be argued to be top-down and undemocratic. It reviews key research reports, commissioned or un-commissioned and conference documents, position papers by key interest groups as its evidence. Media content on important media policy related issues is also analysed to establish the role the media themselves played in facilitating or impeding popular participation in the media reform debates. The discussion hopes to raise questions about the democratic deficits inherent in the current media reform trajectory.
THREE WAVES OF MEDIA REPRESSION IN ZIMBABWE
This article seeks to highlight how the media – especially radio – have alwaysbeen used in Zimbabwe to consolidate the power of the government. This invariably led to oppositional media emerging from outside the country, giving the populace access to alternative discourses from those churned out by state media. The response to the alternative media run by blacks led the Southern Rhodesian and Rhodesian regimes to come up with repressive legislation that criminalised these media. After independence the state media embarked on consolidating the status quo and eliminating some sectors of the community from coverage – a repeat of the past. Legislation inherited from Rhodesia continued to be used in independent Zimbabwe, where the criminalisation of alternative voices and limitations in access to alternative media are predominant. Such a scenario reveals that there have been three waves of media repression in Zimbabwe, from Southern Rhodesia to Rhodesia and then to independent Zimbabwe, to deny the media their independence. Keywords: broadcasting, clandestine, diasporic, dictatorial, domination, ideology,indoctrinating, repression
The Historicity of Media Regulation in Zambia; Examining the Proposed Statutory Self-Regulation
African Journalism Studies , 2021
The media in Zambia have been in a state of uncertainty since Zambia reinstated democratic governance in the early 1990s. Despite promising initial steps to deregulate the media that started under President Chiluba’s government in the mid-1990s, achieving these objectives in successive years has proved difficult. Successive governments have exhibited increasing aversion towards free and independent media, instead increasing efforts to regulate. This is significant, because comparisons with Kaunda’s autocratic era before 1991 cast the state in a friendlier light towards the media, defying normative theories. After both the Media Ethics Council of Zambia and Zambia Media Ethics Council (ZAMEC) failed as self-regulatory mechanisms in the mid to late 2000s, current state efforts have turned to create a hybrid statutory self-regulatory framework. This is a challenge because Zambia’s democracy has come under pressure from increasing political intolerance. Furthermore, while media professi...
A political economy of press self-regulation: the case of South Africa
An edited version of this paper will appear in Media, Culture and Society: forthcoming
"In 2011, the Press Freedom Commission (PFC) was established to recommend the most appropriate regulatory form for South Africa’s press, in the wake of the ruling African National Congress’s (ANC) criticism of the existing system of self-regulation as toothless and self-serving. In 2012, Parliament is also planning public hearings in response to an ANC call to investigate the feasibility of setting up a statutory Media Appeals Tribunal, to hear appeals from the Press Ombudsman’s office. South Africa is not the only country having these debates. In the wake of the phone hacking scandal in Britain, an enquiry chaired by Lord Justice Leveson is also considering alternative regulatory forms to self-regulation, given the failure of the Press Complaints Commission to stem the ethical excesses of the tabloid Press. Several Southern African governments either have instituted or are considering instituting statutory regulation, and politicians are wasting no time on capitalising on developments in Britain to drive a press control agenda. If statutory regulation or even state-industry co-regulation is introduced in Britain, it is very possible that Southern African governments such as South Africa’s will follow suit, leading to a form of ‘North-South’ transfer that will be to the detriment of press freedom in the region. This paper will consider the roots of the crisis in South Africa, the merits of the arguments that the existing system is self-serving, and options for the future. Using a political economy analysis, it will argue that while the system has proved to be very effective in monitoring and adjudicating ethical breaches, it is implicitly designed to cause minimal offence to the industry. The fact that the Council’s founding members have chosen a ‘soft law’ model of self-regulation is a structural flaw in the system's design that is now being exploited by the detractors of self-regulation, and that could lead to system failure at some stage in the future as newspaper circulation declines further and press standards are placed under pressure. Aspects of the global 'best practice' the Council has drawn on have been implicitly designed to benefit proprietors, rather than journalists or the public at large. Unless the system is reformed to develop 'teeth', then the introduction of statutory regulation through the Tribunal is likely as the industry will have great difficulty in defending its version of self-regulation The paper will pursue these arguments primarily through an analysis of the powers and functions of the Council. The paper will pay particular attention to levels of proactivity of the Council in promoting journalism standards, its investigatory powers, its approach to third party complaints, as well as its sanctions. Moving from the premise that solutions to the perceived crisis of press self-regulation should not come from the North only, the paper will also consider regulatory options for the future, informed by the particular press freedom challenges that Southern Africa faces."
Zimbabweans Support Free Media as Watchdog, Question Media's Effectiveness and Integrity
2016
Although Zimbabwe’s Constitution explicitly stipulates that every citizen is entitled to “freedom of the media,” press freedom has had a tenuous existence in Zimbabwe. While recent decades have not seen the direct censorship common before independence (Press Reference, 2016), the public's right to free and unfettered information has suffered from government interference with the print and broadcast media, harassment and arrests of journalists, self-censorship by editors, and media laws that are widely viewed as impeding media freedom (Mudadigwa, 2016). In a statement released to mark World Press Freedom Day (May 3), Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (2016) described the situation as a “media minefield.”