In Zimbabwe’s “highly polarized environment” the media is political, Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity and 85-year-old President Robert Mugabe's spokesperson, George Charamba has said.
Addressing editors from both the state controlled and private media at a two day UNESCO workshop on Building Bridges and Closing Gaps-An Editors Dialogue Towards Common Ground at St Lucia Park in the capital Harare yesterday, Charamba said in today’s “mediased world politics plays throughout the media.”
“… If truth be told, in our highly mediased world, politics plays throughout the media. This is why I am here as your permanent Secretary. I was hired by politics to make them pretty. I am politics’ technician.
‘I need you often. I demand you.”
Charamba, who is also President Robert Mugabe’s spokesperson, said editors just like himself have been hired by “political publishers” to defend certain political positions.
“In our highly politicized environment, the media is politics, raw politics, which is why you are here as little, imperfect shadows of bickering politicians..
“Like me you have been hired by political publishers to become their technicians to either defend and deepen the status qou or to challenge and change it. You need me, the only difference being that some need me alive while others need me in a coffin,” said Charamba.
The Media Ministry Permanent Secretary, often accused for blatantly attacking the private media, said the problem of a polarized media in Zimbabwe is not “imaginary” but reality, adding that his ministry acknowledged it saying addressing the problem is the first step in creating an inclusive media industry in the country.
“UNESCO has put together this roundtable to deal with the problem of a polarized media. It is not an imaginary problem. It is real. Let us acknowledge it. We in the Ministry have acknowledge (sic) it. In fact the thesis of a polarized media came from the ministry when all of you in the media were still wondering what it is that afflicted you.
“Your Ministry has already rejected that polarisation by way of the media indaba we held in Kariba…This was our first tentative step towards rebuilding an inclusive media industry in the country,” added Charamba.
The outspoken Charamba said editors in Zimbabwe have never disagreed on professionalism in journalism but that the wide chasm between state controlled media and private editors is who is better in power President Mugabe or Prime Minister Tsvangirai.
“Interestingly Zimbabwean editors have not lost one another over professional questions. The fury has not been over training, remuneration, ethics, escalating input costs, distribution, advertisers, tax regime…..
“The fury has been over who makes a better prince of power Robert Mugabe or Morgan Tsvangirai; over who makes a better party Zanu (PF) or MDC-T. Ladies and gentleman you have been polarized by politics, not by journalism.”
“….You have been polarized by politics not because you are victims of politicians, but because you have become political yourselves,” added Charamba.
He said the trend of journalists turning political activists hit newsrooms at the same time of the controversial land reform programme.
“The phenomenon of pressman turned political activist hit our newsrooms about the same time of land reforms, itself another political milestone, not a journalistic one.”
Charamba also lambasted the media bodies in Zimbabwe saying they have “nothing or little” to do with media interests.
“You guys have tended to be organized by money, never by promptings of your own minds. The Voluntary Media Council will never come right until and unless it abolishes itself, to again found itself as a genuine media effort.”
“It scares me stiff when violent opposition to the Media and Information Commission (MIC) is cured by a poor recreation of the same MIC with greater powers implied by the aura constitutionalism. The raw message coming through the constitutional Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) that better be misgoverned by gods than by mere mortals,” he said.
