BESIDES its veneration the world over as a noble profession or more precisely, the Fourth Estate, journalism in the Zimbabwean context appears to be viewed differently by authorities, who somehow perceive media personnel as peeping Toms. A week hardly passes without journalists’ freedoms somehow curtailed by State security agents.
NewsDay Comment
We believe journalists, just like nurses and doctors, ought to be classified as the country’s frontline combatants in the fight against the pandemic, with the latter as the eye and ear of the nation. But this has not been the case, with media violations rising almost daily ranging from physical attacks, harassment and arrests.
The media violations moved a notch up soon after government declared COVID-19 a national disaster, with journalists seeking to tell the Zimbabwean story initially accused of conducting their lawful professional duties without valid accreditation cards issued by the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC). The ZMC is still to issue the requisite 2020 accreditation cards following the expiry of the 2019 cards.
It is against that background that journalists were given the go-ahead to operate until the new and valid cards are duly issued. Ironically, by arresting and harassing journalists operating without valid 2020 cards, the police were not only violating the right to media freedom, but the government and ZMC’s directive that the media, as an essential service, should be allowed to conduct its operations without hindrance until the issuance of valid 2020 Press cards.
For a moment, it seemed as if the government had two pandemics at hand which struck the country at once — namely COVID-19 and the media. Though the government seemed more clueless on what it was fighting pertaining to the former, it was well oiled and ruthless on the latter.
It is from that vintage point that organisations like the Media Institute of Southern Africa-Zimbabwe chapter took the Zimbabwe Republic Police to the High Court and obtained an interdict to stop officers enforcing the lockdown regulations from interfering with the journalists and downstream operations of the media, whose freedoms are guaranteed under section 61 of the Constitution.
Despite the court ruling and directives from police bosses, ground forces enforcing the lockdown order continue to throw spanners in the works of journalists, especially at security checkpoints.
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Just because it’s a calling, journalists continue to report the COVID-19 pandemic, with a marauding police force in hot pursuit and facing the risk of contracting the deadly pandemic as they are poorly-equipped to protect themselves.
Beyond the internal challenges that journalism faces today, in terms of changing business models, the changing patterns of news consumption, media houses’ shoe-string budgets and pressures of breaking accurate, authentic and balanced stories, journalists in Zimbabwe face the daily threat of being arrested, attacked, detained or harassed on the one hand, and a high risk of contracting the deadly virus on the other. In essence, the media are reporting COVID-19 in the line of fire with 15 violations recorded to date.
