The Zimbabwean media have degenerated into a state of chaos, with clear polarisation along party political lines, according to a report by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa).
The Institute sent a delegation from Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia to Zimababwe to examine the state of media freedom in the country in the run up to parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2005.
Just one day after the team’s arrival, the country’s state-run media began calling for the local Misa office to be closed down. ”We did it under very difficult conditions and in a hostile environment,” said Fernando Goncalves, editor of the Savanah newspaper in Mozambique, and a member of the three person delegation.
”The battle line is no longer the terrain of the political opponents — the media is the battle field … In the fight for dominance on the one hand and survival on the other, journalistic ethics are being compromised,” said Pamela Dube, editor of Mokgosi newspaper in Botswana.
The Misa report accuses the state-controlled media of disseminating hate messages against those perceived to be political opponents of the ruling Zanu-PF. ”Violence seems to be encouraged by hate messages that are carried out in the state media, particularly the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) and the country’s main daily, The Herald.”
The delegation found that the state-controlled media rarely cover the activities of the political opposition and that when they do, the reports invariably portray opposition leaders and their supporters as unpatriotic, subversive elements who are seeking to instigate violence and overthrow the government.
The report finds that journalists from the state media have fallen into the habit of supporting the ruling party without question and that at times they even take clear positions on factions within the ruling party.
The report says violence and intimidation extend to journalists who fail to toe the party line as well as to the lawyers who represent them. Independent journalists are prevented from covering certain events, and when they are arrested on politically trumped-up charges, lawyers find it increasingly difficult to access them.
Misa laments the closure of Zimbabwe’s only private daily newspaper, The Daily News, saying that this has deprived voters of information and advertising run by independent voter education programmes. The newspaper was closed last year in terms of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Zimbabwe is also enacting a restrictive law to control and regulate the use of the Internet. In the absence of any privately-owned radio or television stations, the Internet has become a popular source of news.
Rural voters who depend on the radio for news have been particularly hard hit by the lack of independent broadcast media, says Goncalves: ”People in rural areas are so scared to listen to shortwave radio because of the consequences. They listen to it in hiding or inside the house — not in public — because of fear.”
The Misa report notes that Zimbabwean authorities do not allow shortwave radio sets into the country,  largely to prevent the population from listening to Voice of the People,  a radio station based in London and run by Zimbabwean nationals.
Basildon Peta, a Zimbabwean journalist based in South Africa, said  ”Zimbabwe, which is further tightening its media laws, has descended into totalitarianism comparable only to Burma [Myanmar].”
According to Misa, Zimbabwe registered 102 attacks on the media in 2003 — the highest number in the Southern African Development Community. These included incidents of assault, imprisonment and legal threats.