The Sunday News
ON Friday 23 January the Zimbabwe National Editors Forum (Zinef) held its Annual General Meeting at the New Ambassador Hotel in Harare, where Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo was guest of honour. The following is a report on Zinef’s operations in 2014 and the state of the media that was delivered by former Zinef chairperson Brian Mangwende.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Members of the Zimbabwe National Editors Forum,
Good morning and welcome to our annual general meeting at the New Ambassador Hotel in Harare. I would like to bid a very warm welcome to our guests from out of Harare who had to endure long trips to be with us.
Let me begin by saying that the year 2014 has been a difficult year for the media industry in Zimbabwe. The media sector is going through harsh economic times as leading companies mainly Zimbabwe Newspapers Group (Zimpapers), Alpha Media Holdings (AMH), Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) and the state run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) are forced to retrench, slash salaries, or embrace convergence as part of cost cutting measures to ensure survival.
Since its formation, the work of the forum has revolved around seeking to provide all Zimbabwean news media editors with a national platform through which to discuss issues not only affecting the media profession, but also shared concerns of editorial staff in newsrooms.
The forum’s key objective include the upholding of professionalism and to facilitate exchange of ideas between editors while at the same time working to defend and promote media freedom through all possible mediums.
Media environment
The operationalisation of the new constitution which explicitly guarantees the right to media freedom and citizen’s to access information offers immense opportunity for the realignment of the country’s media laws to the new constitution.
While there has been progress in trying to secure Zimbabwe’s right to freedom of expression and access to information through the new constitution, there has been little progress in ensuring that the guarantees become a reality.
In fact, Government has sent mixed signals on its policy direction with regard to guaranteeing freedom of expression and access to information. For instance, while promises of reforms as exemplified by the establishment of a commission of enquiry into media issues and progress in the licensing of provincial commercial broadcasters, pessimism still persists on the substance of the promised reforms.
The doubts are grounded on contradictions in official pronouncements on the media. For instance, whereas one arm of Government has been very vocal against criminal defamation, the other arm has defended it.
Furthermore, though the Ministry of Information has reached out to media and sought to bridge the gap between journalists working in the private media and State media’ there appears to be consensus that the standards of both journalism practice and training in Zimbabwe has dropped, and this has serious negative implications for the role of the media in a divided country going through complex political and economic challenges.
The drop in standards often manifests itself in general poor quality of reportage, piecemeal training programmes in some training institutions, the pervasiveness of the “brown envelope” phenomenon among journalists, the assumption of active political positions in reportage by journalists. All these and other factors have over time arguably resulted in a lowering of journalism’s social capital in the Zimbabwean society.
At broader structural level, the decline in standards is explained by journalists and editors themselves as well as other players in civil society) in various ways: from the poor state of the economy which has led both media houses and training institutions to operate on miniscule budgets, to the escalation of authoritarian politics and the accompanying demise of journalistic agency especially in the public media.
Within newsrooms and media training institutions, factors such as the lack of credible newsroom supervision and thought leadership, general absence of personal drive, the unfilled skill voids left by both senior journalists and media trainers and academics who trekked into the diaspora at the height of the crisis, among other factors all impact on standards in the profession.
Outline of Activities
In the period January to December 2014, the Zimbabwe National Editors Forum implemented the following activities aimed at promoting the process of media reforms in Zimbabwe as well as building the capacity of the organisation.
In February 2014, Zinef held a breakfast meeting with the Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services. The meeting opened up engagement platforms with the Ministry of Information which will be essential to the organisation in its continued advocacy for freedom of expression and media freedom. The minister called upon editors from the State media to join and participate in Zinef activities. As Zinef we are glad to announce that our membership is now all encompassing as we now have editors from the State media also participating in our activities.
Zinef also had a breakfast meeting on criminal defamation law, a law which has seen a number of editors and journalist getting arrested for publishing stories deemed to be defamatory to certain individuals. Advocacy initiative for the repeal of the criminal defamation law by Zinef and other media resulted in the constitutional court passing a landmark judgment in which it declared that criminal defamation must be struck off the statutes because it was not justifiable in the democratic society.
Zinef also forwarded its position paper on the state of the media to the Information Media Panel of Inquiry in September last year. The position paper outlines challenges facing the media sector and proposes recommendations to those challenges. We await the release of the IMPI report.
In October 2014, the Zinef board met with police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba at the police headquarters in Harare. The visit was part of the forum’s engagement with Government arms on issues concerning the media as part of its mandate to promote professionalism, ethics, transparency and accountability.
In September 2014, Zinef held a second session of social media training with editors at Village Lodge in Gweru.The training was aimed at reviewing the editor’s understanding of concepts and techniques taught in the first session held in June as well as to introduce more social media techniques and concept. The training also sought to improve understanding via simplified but intensive practical exercises which would allow editors to understand new social media concepts as well as offering training on more Digital Media techniques.
We are also pleased to announce that Zinef is now part of the regional editors bodies, namely SAEF, SANEF and TAEF. Zinef is therefore now eligible to participate in regional and international events. We also urge editors to support our colleagues in the region by issuing statements on violations taking place within the region.
Partnerships
In the year under review Zinef partnered with the Federation of Africa Media Women (FAMWZ) in organising a gender and media conference. The conference provided a platform for media stakeholders to take stock as well as to stimulate co-ordinated action by media players to address gender issues within the industry.
Zinef also partnered with the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe in organising a media stakeholders’ meeting with the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on the media. The purpose of the activity was to map out critical priorities in the media, as well as to engage the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on challenges facing the media industry in Zimbabwe.
Zinef also collaborated with the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe in organising an editor’s networking braai where the editors were upraised on the media code of conduct. This was in a bid to promote ethical and professional reportage of news by the media.
Administration
The Zinef is seeking to form a full-fledged secretariat and to that end, it has submitted funding proposals to different donor agencies.
The Zinef funds are still being administered by the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe as we currently do not have a full-fledged secretariat.
As regards to our financial situation, that will be covered in the financial report which is an item on the agenda of those meetings.
Fundraising
In the year 2014 Zinef got funding from Unesco to produce a consolidated barometer for media reforms. The media barometer provides an evaluation of the media environment in the country and it measures progress that has been made to ensure that constitutional rights were fully realised.
We also partnered with the US Embassy in organising a World Press Freedom Day, in May 2014.
In July 2014 the Zinef conducted a training needs assessment for editors in conjunction with the world association of editors (WAN-IFRA).
The training needs assessment revealed that there are low skills levels in newsrooms, the editors also list the following as challenges that they are facing in the implementation of their programmes:
Newsroom skills levels
Economic environment
Media regulations
Technology and
Media management/leadership skills.
Membership
When Zinef was established it had a membership of less than 10 editors. But to date we are glad to announce that we have managed to mobilise over 40 editors and our membership continues to grow.
Website
We are also pleased to announce that we now have someone updating our website on a regular basis despite the constraints of funds
Conclusion
Given the political goodwill demonstrated by the Government towards a new engagement framework for the media, it remains imperative that there be holistic efforts towards further professionalising journalism and further democratising the media environment in Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwe National Editors Forum will through this AGM seek to incorporate two female editors into the Zinef board structure. It is my hope that by the end of this AGM we would have co-opted two female editors in to the Zinef board.
We also urge media leaders to co-opt more females in their leadership structures as you note that there are very few female editors in the media sector in Zimbabwe.
Lastly we would like to urge editors to publicise activities that the forum is undertaking and continue to support us in the work that we do.
B Mangwende
Chairperson
Zinef.
