Zimbabwe Cricket (ZC) reportedly refused to accredit journalists from our parent company, Alpha Media Holdings, ostensibly because of some negative stories written about the cricket body.
Comment: NewsDay Editor
We would like to believe ZC has more sense than resorting to primitive methods to curtail reportage of anything that happens in cricket.
For the avoidance of doubt, NewsDay and its sister papers are not there to paint a rosy picture about ZC, but instead to shine a light in the dark corners and ensure that the suffocating cricket cobwebs are removed.
AMH is not ZC’s public relations arm and the cricket honchos must expect that if we feel something is amiss we will investigate and write about it, without fear or favour.
As George Orwell famously said: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
Thus, we feel we are on the right track and have done our duty, as journalists in investigating stories and writing what ZC do not want to be published.
If ZC thought they were solving a problem by barring our reporters, then they must be prepared for the consequences, as this move will only backfire and embolden our journalists to dig deeper and unearth the least savoury of stories.
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We will not bend over backwards to please the mandarins at ZC and they should not expect sycophantic support from us, but we will stick to our mandate of holding them to account.
If ZC has nothing to hide, then they should be transparent and give journalists unfettered access to cricket and if everything is clean, then they will be nothing but good news to report.
Barring journalists and removing them from a mailing list is infantile to say the least and we would have expected maturity from the cricket governing body.
If ZC felt aggrieved by our stories, or thought we had got it wrong, then they have every right to engage us and we would be more than willing to correct anything we get wrong.
Their approach in this instance, we feel, was unjustified and has no place in a sport governing body.
That cricket in Zimbabwe is in the doldrums is no secret and ZC needs all the partners they can get to improve the sport.
By showing where they have gone wrong, our intention is not to destroy but rather it is to build, by offering constructive criticism and pointing out where they would have failed.
ZC may bar reporters, but this will not stop them from writing stories, and the bosses at the cricket governing body, as public administrators, should grow thick skins and stop thinking of themselves as victims.
