Media objectivity encouraged in covering corruption cases

Robin Muchetu
Senior Reporter
Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Monica Mutsvangwa has called on the media to adopt a fearless and objective position when reporting on corruption.

This, she added, will help Government to deal with corruption, which has become a major problem in turning around the economy.

Minister Mutsvangwa said this while addressing a Parliamentary Pre-Budget Seminar in Bulawayo on Friday.

“This is a mammoth task to project the right image of our country; if we are very honest to ourselves, we must accept that we have done a very good job of marketing our beautiful country and its people.

‘‘We have been provided with that democratic space by the President and it is now time to reform and build a new economy for a population that has suffered economic deprivation for a long time.

‘‘It is critical to have everybody on board,” she said.

The media has to create an environment where the mantra “Zimbabwe is open for business” can bring results and successes to the economy, she said.

“We are talking to journalists and it is critical that for us to succeed, they should report candidly and professionally on economic issues. We have a Government which has zero tolerance to corruption and for us to win this fight, we need fearless and objective media, we also need digital literacy to package our information. Digitalisation will make it easy to access information. It will help us close the gap between the rural and urban populations,” she said.

Minister Mutsvangwa said it is time to open up more opportunities for journalists and help them upgrade their skills.

“We are talking of benchmarking and exchange programmes for our journalists.

‘‘We need them to report from a position of exposure, not (to be) inward-looking, and so it is critical that the ministry sponsors and hosts opinion drivers from the international world to help our journalists in training.

‘‘That will help improve the country’s image out there,” she said.

Minister Mutsvangwa said it is critical to conclude the digitalisation programme in order to bring on board new players in the industry.

“We have to work hard to finalise digitalisation and we will soon be issuing licenses to other players for competition purposes.

‘‘Competition is the way to go, opening the airwaves is our mandate in this Second Republic and it’s good for the people. There must be diversity. We want a lot of content and we can get information from the provinces through community radios.

“We will be doing a lot of stakeholder consultations and conferences as we cannot make decisions sitting in the offices.

‘‘We need to get information from the media practitioners out there. We have equipment that was meant for digitalisation and was brought in 2015, this is technology and technology changes very fast, it will become obsolete before digitalisation is even complete so we need financial inclusion from the Finance Ministry.”

Government, Minister Mutsvangwa said, is working on improving the welfare of journalists.

“We are working with various media institutions to ensure that journalism is a worthwhile, respectable and useful profession.

‘‘The messages they send out build opinions, so now we need to get rid of destitution out of the profession. We are working closely together and we are going to come up with a fund to ensure their welfare is improved. We will work with every media institution across the board,” she said.

The minister also highlighted that 95 percent of the Information Ministry’s fleet is grounded and this has affected the mobility of information officers. It has also compromised information dissemination in rural areas.