Africa’s story should be told by African journalists, not by foreigners who have a tendency to set their own agendas, Zimbabwe’s Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said on Wednesday.
”Our stories continue to be told by others,” he was quoted by the state news agency Ziana.
”When we don’t discuss certain stories about ourselves, others set the agenda for us and give us issues to preoccupy ourselves with,” said Moyo during a meeting of representatives of public media institutions of Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Moyo told the meeting that the current situation ”where the world relied on foreign news agencies for stories about the region was not conducive as there was the risk of distortion”.
Namibia’s Information and Broadcasting Minister, Nangolo Mbumba, told the same meeting that the African public media must counter the ”negative” reporting on Africa by the Western media.
”We should counter what the enemy is trying to smear on us,” he said.
A regional weekly Sunday newspaper to be published by the country’s two state-run printing houses will be launched on Saturday in the north-western resort town of Victoria Falls.
Zimbabwe’s press laws, introduced shortly after President Robert Mugabe won a second term in office in 2002, have been condemned by rights activists as draconian.
Conditions for the foreign media have also been tightened in recent years, including paying thousand of dollars in accreditation fees.
The government’s Media and Information Commission also closed down three independent newspapers in the past year. — Sapa-AFP