The Qatar-based television news station Al-Jazeera has said that it will cover Zimbabwe ”without pre-conceptualised ideas” when it launches its new 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel next month.
One of the station’s major successes has been getting a licence to open a bureau in Zimbabwe, where it is illegal to work as a journalist without one.
Al-Jazeera, which will broadcast on satellite television to African audiences, will be the first international broadcaster in three years to have a base in Zimbabwe, after the BBC, Sky and CNN were kicked out of the country.
Nigel Parsons, the MD of Al- Jazeera International, said he was not surprised that the Zimbabwean authorities granted the news channel a licence. ”They may have a lack of trust in the other Western news channels, but we did not come with that baggage.”
Parsons added that he was very aware of the restraints media workers faced in Zimbabwe. ”I want to make it very clear that we will run the stories of success, but also be critical of events in the country if that is needed. We know the rules of engagement.”
Former BBC World Service journalist Farai Sevenzo will be the station’s Zimbabwe correspondent. As a documentary filmmaker, Sevenzo recorded the ongoing events in Zimbabwe with a series of personal observations that began with the award-winning Zimbabwe 2002.
Sevenzo said he was up for the challenge. While he believed that it would be naive to think that it would be smooth sailing all the way, he did not want to go into the country with a ”mindfix”.
”Zimbabwe is a massive untold story,” he said. ”We need to hear what they are saying.”
Apart from Zimbabwe, the channel will also have bureaus in Nairobi, Cairo, Abidjan and Johannesburg. In addition, Al-Jazeera International will share the resources of the station’s bureaus in Chad, Libya, Somalia and Sudan.
Parsons said the station would provide accurate, impartial and objective news from a grassroots level for a global audience.
One of the station’s strengths is that it is very astute in tapping into ”views of the street”, he believed. ”It is a new brand of journalism that we are taking into the world.”