The Standard comes up tops

News
THE Standard has maintained its position as Zimbabwe’s most balanced, accurate and fair newspaper, according to the latest Media Credibility Index (MCI).

THE Standard has maintained its position as Zimbabwe’s most balanced, accurate and fair newspaper, according to the latest Media Credibility Index (MCI).

BY OUR STAFF

The MCI, published by the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ), revealed that for the months of October and November 2012, The Standard was the best performer with a credibility rating of 94%.

Tied on second place were The Standard’s sister publications, The Independent and NewsDay which had a 92% credibility rating.

The Daily News, Studio 7 and SW Radio Africa were all tied in third place at 87%. The Herald scored 82%, while ZBC Television was rated the worst with a 66% credibility rating.

In the previous August to September survey, NewsDay was rated the best with a score of 87%, followed by The Standard 83% and the Zimbabwe Independent 80%.

A total of 12 national news outlets were monitored in the October/November survey, up from 10 in August/September.

Presenting the findings last week MMPZ researcher, Busi Dube said the examined media carried a total of 909 top stories in the October-November Survey, 772 of which were judged credible, with remaining 137 considered not credible.

This translated to an overall credibility rating index of 84%, 24% up from the 61% aggregate score achieved during the August/September survey.

Dube said the public media had a poorer aggregate credibility rating of 83% compared to the private media which scored 90%.

The study noted that political and governance issues remained the worst reported, with an average rating of 81%. On social issues, the study revealed that 92% of the 227 reports surveyed were credible. In the business and economic sphere, the private media had a credibility rating of 96% while the public media had 83%.

The study noted a number of weaknesses in the media’s top reports. These include single-sourced reports, sensational headlines and editorial intrusions which pollute the reliability of some of the news main stories.