New !! Media Coverage of the 2008 Elections : ...more


Daily Media Update No.57
Enjoying a monopoly on the local news market again today, the government dailies, The Herald and Chronicle took the opportunity to distort the critical verdicts of all three African observer missions and downplay almost universal condemnation of Friday’s presidential run-off, particularly by regional leaders attending the African Union summit in Egypt. Instead, the papers continued to pervert any truthful interpretation by focusing on the few selective statements endorsing Robert Mugabe’s return to the presidency. They also continued to parrot the government’s regime-change mantra, publishing conspiracy analyses in defence of the controversial poll from which the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, withdrew citing a sustained, nationwide campaign of state-sponsored violence against his party’s supporters, and a corrupted electoral process. Since the election result, the papers have also adopted Mugabe’s suddenly conciliatory approach to the idea of inter-party dialogue without comparing this position with his belligerent pre-election statements. Between them, the papers carried 16 stories on Zimbabwe’s post-election crisis, although that is not how they interpreted developments. Of these, 14 were reports on issues arising from the election, while two were official statements claiming that the post-election period was peaceful. : ...more