OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Monday
THE former editor of Zimbabwe’s main state-controlled newspaper has admitted he suppressed stories that showed President Robert Mugabe’s government in a bad light in the run-up to parliamentary elections in June.
“We went out of our way and abandoned all professional ethics as you know them,” former editor of the daily Herald newspaper Bornwell Chakaodza said.
The pre-election period, characterised by a four-month campaign of violence unleashed by ruling ZANU (PF) party, was a “frustrating” time for journalists on the newspaper, he told the weekly independent Standard newspaper.
“The journalists, true to their profession, were actually bringing in factual, objective and well-written stories,” he said.
“But they did not see the light of day because of the stance we had decided to take in support of the government.”
Chakaodza said that after the elections he realised that the paper’s propaganda offensive inflicted serious financial losses when circulation slumped and advertisers abandoned it.
The 109-year-old newspaper lost its dominance of the market for the first time this year to the independent Daily News. Its circulation fell from 120000 to 80000, while the year-old Daily News soared to 110000 with its continuous exposure of state-backed violence and corruption under Mugabe.
“The general mood of the country did not agree with the position that the Herald had adopted,” Chakaodza said.
“Unfortunately for Zimbabwe Newspapers the position we took flew in the face of the people in the urban areas where we sell our newspapers,” he said.
Zimbabwe Newspapers is the state-controlled company that owns a stable of two dailies, including the Herald, two Sunday papers and two other weeklies.
He tried to return the newspaper to a more truthful stance immediately after the elections but was removed from editorship of the paper early in September and eventually fired last Monday.