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MEDIATING ZIMBABWEAN POLITICS: SOME ETHICAL CHALLENGES IN THE PRINT MEDIA The hacking scandal that has rocked media baron, Rupert Murdochs media empire has rekindled the debate about responsible and ethical journalism especially in covering national elections in Zimbabwe. Again, it has brought to the fore questions about whether or not the Zimbabwean media can self-regulate and adhere to cardinal journalistic principles across the political divide. Writing in The Herald (16 July 2011) Tafataona Mahoso, a proponent of statutory regulation and regarded in media circles as a media hangman, decried what he called the unfettered press in Britain and its unethical conduct. Mahoso appeared to celebrate how the hacking scandal has claimed the scalps of the British Queen and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The latter allegedly bribed senior police and other security officers who in turn sold secured phone numbers to journalists. These were then hacked to gain access to the most sensitive and most intimate details of the victims of the scandal including that of a juvenile murder victim. Britain, according to Mahoso has been exposed for its hypocrisy. The News of the World scandal prompted media analysts to call for a media that is informed by African values and sensibilities. Granted, there can be no such thing as universal media ethics. Media ethics are socially and culturally defined. However, it is instructive to note that there are basic standards of behavior to which all journalists must be sworn. The coverage of national politics in Zimbabwe in the print media between 2000 and 2008 is illustrative of the sort of gutter journalism that has cost both the so- called private and public media public trust and respect. Sensational headlines, raunchy and explicit details about peoples private lives were provided in the name of press freedom and democracy.

A case in point is when the state controlled newspapers (The Herald, the Sunday Mail, the Manica Post and the Sunday News) depicted the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, as a sponsored puppet of the British. Tafataona Mahoso and Nathaniel Manheru (the alleged pseudonym of the incumbent president, Robert Mugabes spokesperson), earned their dubious distinctions as muckraking columnists in the state media in the period leading to the 2008 elections by their hate language on the opposition leader. Equally, the so called private media has failed to live up to the public trust in recent years. It has tended to pander to the whims of the corporate sector and the regime change lobby allegedly fronted by the MDC. A celebrated example is the case in which the privately owned Daily News made serious allegations about a woman who was beheaded by alleged ruling party supporters. This was allegedly done in the eyes of her children ostensibly for supporting the opposition MDC. The story was attributed to unnamed sources under the pretext of the journalistic ethic of protection of sources. As it turned out the story had been based on flimsy hearsay. Unfortunately it was used as one example of unethical conduct to justify and cement stringent statutory regulation of the media in the country. A few years down the line media hangman like Mahoso and Jonathan Moyo appear vindicated in the wake of the hacking scandal in Britain. In the light of this scandal, former Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, has criticized the British for pontificating about press freedom as a human right. He attacked the British press for misrepresenting the false virtues of self- regulation and cynically parading the British Press Complaints Council (PCC) as a paragon of self regulation worthy of emulation by developing countries such as Zimbabwe(Sunday Mail 10 July 2011). As Information Minister, Moyo was the architect of the draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). This law was used to ban private newspapers like

the Daily News, the Daily News on Sunday and the Tribune. AIPPA has done little more than to criminalise the journalism profession in Zimbabwe. However, if, as Moyo argues, the private print media is dominated by brown envelope seeking editors and journalists, it is about time media practitioners self-introspect. The time-honoured African philosophy of ubuntu (Africanness) should guide the practice of journalism in Zimbabwe. This is the bedrock of African morality. It is time media practitioners in Zimbabwe conduct their business guided by what Francis Kasoma (1996) calls Afri-ethics. This entails, inter-alia, the fulfillment of obligations to kinsfolk, and giving solutions to communal problems rather than creating them. According to Kasoma, journalists must cultivate a deep sense of guilt as well as solidarity and oneness of one voice. Only then can the African media in general and the Zimbabwe media in particular, address its ethical challenges.