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NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

Such a fine, young professional

Opinion & Analysis
YOU cannot know everything about everyone, but some people are truly remarkable and unique in more ways than one.

YOU cannot know everything about everyone, but some people are truly remarkable and unique in more ways than one.

CONWAY TUTANI ECHOES

Such a person was Mernat Mafirakurewa, who died tragically in a car accident last week aged 33. At that young age, he was business editor at the Chronicle and, prior to that, had been news editor at NewsDay.

One did not have to have an eagle eye for talent to spot him. He was good enough to step up to that position.

(By the way, this has nothing to do with the fact that both of us were avid supporters of Zimbabwean football champions Dynamos!)

A thing I quickly observed was that Mafira — as Mafirakurewa was familiarly known in journalistic circles — was not only a journalist, but also proved to be a manager. In many cases, those in charge of newsrooms do not have management capability. They do not have management skills such as planning, leading, organising, controlling, communicating, training, delegating, motivating and disciplining.

But Mafira was refreshingly different, a really breath of fresh air. He did not let things drift. Journalists can be a most intractable lot.

I remember him telling one reporter who was in the habit of coming and going as he wished that he was not leaving the newsroom until he finished writing his story and that story had been cleared.

A news editor at times needs to mix the skills of a journalist with those of an army general.

If reason fails, you may need to issue a military order, as it were, because there is just no time to dillydally in view of tight deadlines and a competitive market where late delivery of the newspaper can spell disaster, particularly with diminishing disposable income in Zimbabwe which has made buying newspapers a luxury.

Thus, a news editor needs to have a commanding presence. Mafira, because of his authoritative — not authoritarian — approach, was capable of speeding that learning and maturing process among reporters who thought they had learnt and done it all. He might not have deliberately set out to do so, but the blueprint of order and organisation was beginning to take shape when he left NewsDay to join the Chronicle in March this year. He was good enough to be poached.

Another strong trait of good leadership was that Mafira spoke on behalf of his subordinates to company management without being confrontational. It was not “us and them”.

As a journalist, Mafira was professional through and through. He was particularly against misleading headlines. He did not mistake licentiousness (disregard for strict rules of correctness) for allowable headline licence. He correctly observed that many defamation lawsuits arise from reckless headlines without any link to the facts in the accompanying story. Mafira would rather err on the cautious than reckless side, so he wasn’t a risk as far as defamation lawsuits were concerned.

Mafira was also against sensationalisation. In the name of “investigative journalism”, some newspapers spew pure sensation. That kind of journalism kills credibility. Without credibility, journalism has no value.

Mafira was also averse to newspapers being ensnared to fight proxy wars on behalf of churches, politicians — anyone for that matter. This, in my humble opinion, was his greatest quality as a journalist. Not only does the Constitution not identify with a particular faith or denomination or a particular political party, it is unjournalistic to do so or to be used to do so.

Is that why Mafira maintained safe and clear professional distance between himself and the subject of his story?

This was brought out by Edwin Ndlovu, the former Bulawayo provincial spokesperson for the Welshman Ncube-led MDC, this week in his obituary of Mafira in Southern Eye.

Ndlovu said Mafira took great exception after being queried over his phrasing of a line in a story that he had given him. Ndlovu wrote: “. . . he (Mafira) bluntly told me that he, unlike me, was not a public relations person for my party, but a very serious journalist at work”.

It is hard not to have some attachment to some of the people you deal with regularly in the line of work in journalism. You begin to feel for them and the situations they are in. You are human at the end of the day.

But if you don’t maintain professional distance, you will find yourself in some awkward situation and you will certainly be taken advantage of. You need to know your boundaries, and not to overstep them. For instance, some jail guards get so emotionally attached to prisoners that they let them escape. But throwing in their lot with inmates will result in both parties ending up behind bars.

Likewise, it’s not for journalists or newspapers to try to prop up a politician.

If you see a politician drowning and you jump in, you could both end up drowning. Some politicians are given massive and positive publicity by embedded journalists, but come voting day, they get nothing — absolutely nothing. And those journalists’ reputation is sullied. So, some detachment is a functional and professional necessity.

Journalists could learn from social workers who are trained to be kind and understanding to alcoholics, drug addicts, beggars, prostitutes and other such down-and-outs, but not get emotionally attached if they are to be effective. Imagine if every doctor cried in the ward every time a patient died, would they carry out their duties effectively?

Mr/Ms Journalist, you can become a friend with a politician, but in a different way. You are not a friend as in the normal sense and this is where boundaries kick in.

Know when to draw the line and remain professional. Listen to them, read between the lines – and do not let them take over. Rest in peace, Mafira.

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