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BY SIBANENGI DUBE
The world woke up last week to read in The Herald that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai bribed editors of the independent Press. The government-aligned paper claimed that Tsvangirai was trying to buy positive reportage so as to salvage his battered image. What is worrying here is not that The Herald lied. That has always been the trademark of the paper. People will be worried if The Herald starts dishing out the truth.
What is surprising is the fact that the paper confirmed a widely held view that The Herald newsroom personnel do not even take their work seriously. This is because they have no control of the paper’s content since print-ready copies seem to be faxed whole from either Shake-shake building, Kaguvi or from the Ministry of Information. The evidence to back the above claim is abundant.
Can anyone imagine how a story that never cited any source managed to see the light of the day? There is not even any attempt to mention either anonymous or well-placed sources. Even if the paper had concealed sources from the media house, what justification would they give because Tsvangirai has no potential to victimise employees of private media companies? To make matters worse, The Herald did not hesitate to employ declaratory suppositions in the story which were spewed out as facts.
Media Commissioner, Ambassador Chris Mutsvangwa, was prominently given space to condemn a non-existent anomaly. The editors and the Prime Minister were vituperated for a crime that never was. Mutsvangwa is a Zanu PF appointee who has served in various diplomatic postings, including South Africa.
Tsvangirai’s bravery by taking the Zanu PF regime head on elicits positive media coverage. There is no need for him to buy positivity in the media. His deeds are surely enough to gain public sympathy. The media is merely reflecting that. Tsvangirai’s MDC doesn’t own a newspaper or radio or television station but receive positive global headlines every day. This is simply because Tsvangirai munhu anevanhu (Man of the people). Zanu PF is the only political party in Zimbabwe that has to resort to desperate methods of drumming up good publicity.
What is beyond any debate is that The Herald has gone a step further by abandoning all residual media ethics they have been struggling to adhere to. To claim that Tsvangirai bribed editors in the absence of a police case, court conviction, complainant or proof is recklessness of the first order. There is no way any sane editor would have okayed such a glaring misrepresentation, which has the potential of undermining any newspaper’s credibility.
It is no secret that Zimpapers employees are part of the media enlisted on a campaign to inflict maximum damage to Tsvangirai’s credibility, but one would expect a journalist to be alert to obvious plots. The only sensible conclusion that could mitigate such a glaring omissions is that the story was manufactured at the red-brick house and delivered as a print-ready copy to The Herald printers.
I don’t doubt even for a second that The Herald personnel is aware of the fact that readers have ceased to believe whatever they write about Tsvangirai and MDC. People read a paper to get informed and any overt diversion from this role renders the newspaper untrustworthy. Owing to these indiscretions, Tsvangirai’s credibility is unassailable, especially by The Herald. The readers are very much aware of the context in which the toxic stories are discharged.
In actual fact, it could be said most readers now read The Herald in reverse. What The Herald reports about Tsvangirai or MDC is almost always the opposite of the actual situation of the ground. It is now actually a badge of honour to be attacked by The Herald.
The Locadia Karimatsenga Tembo saga and his utterances in support of gay rights are trivialities that should not be used to undermine the high esteem in which the PM is held by the Zimbabwe electorate. Tsvangirai has curved himself trust in people’s hearts to the extent that even if he were to shoot someone in self-defence, the victim would be blamed for pushing the former trade unionist to the trigger.
The Herald can fill hectares of their newspaper space with columns, stories, side-bars, opinion pieces and features articles denigrating Tsvangirai, readers’ reactions will always be: “Idzi inhema idzi (It’s all lies).
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