Corruption watch: A rare media response

BY WITH TAWANDA MAJONI

Other things aside, last week was just one big week in the media!

The Standard started it and, for six full days, the house was on fire. The paper disgorged three quite rare articles under one robust breath.

The central article was an investigative piece by an awesome female journalist writing under the pen name Nyaradzo Nyere.

She exposed a tobacco company, Voedsel Tobacco International, for shortchanging contract farmers in more than one way.

As a side bar, Nyaradzo then gave a fluid account of how fellow journalists had tried to get her to kill the story, offering a delicious US$2,000 for that. She declined the generous but sick offer.

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And, no prize for saying it, this is a rare show of honesty.  Probably the first of its kind in recent Zimbabwean history.

Then there was that article by Yours Truly, rapping the knuckles of despicably corrupt colleagues in the media.

Now, this combo caused an explosion that went far and wide.

The guys at the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) and the Zimbabwe National Editors Forum (Zinef) shook off their Sunday morning hangover to compose very encouraging statements condemning brown envelop journalism. Zinef promised a probe and VMCZ urged one too.

Then, in the following days, a number of heartening developments around the Sunday exposes took place.

The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) also penned a serious statement berating brown envelop journalism and actually convened a dialogue on the matter.

The ministry of Information reached out to yours truly indicating that it was considering doing its own statement too.

It doesn’t matter that it didn’t do so after all.

Comrade Kindness Paradza’s gesture was still encouraging, more so seeing that he has also in the past spoken quite energetically against media-based corruption.

The three articles in The Standard’s edition of last week also caught the attention of the Zimpapers board, which indicated that it was keen to probe its own employees if they were involved in the said brown envelope journalism.

None was involved in this particular context, but that doesn’t exactly mean that none is doing brown envelope work at that stable.

In the past, two senior reporters from the media house were actually part of a syndicate that tried to get yours truly to drop a story relating to how a well-connected real estate mogul had defrauded a group of home-seekers.

Pity I neglected getting the evidence regarding these two, but I complained to their then  editor who further whined about how the journalists were running on the payroll of a senior politician who has since retired from politics, and clogging the basement with state-of-the-art cars bought with bribes.

If these chaps read beyond their own stories, they will know that I’m talking about them, just that they won’t tell anyone that.

Kudos to Classic 263 for organising a radio talk on this malaise of brown envelope journalism.

Brother Tangai Chipangura, currently the acting editor at The Standard, must also be hailed for the paper’s decision to make a public pledge to fight corruption in the newsroom.

The pledge that The Standard did must, actually, be adopted by the other publications, whether mainstream or online.

Yes, talk is sometimes cheap, but running the pledge in a prominent way serves as a persistent reminder to journalists who would want to engage in corruption or are already doing it.

It has a desirable psychological effect, even though, of course, it won’t be sufficient to curb corruption.

The VMCZ membership already has a running pledge to uphold a code of ethics, but this gesture can be taken further by specifically mentioning corruption.

Well, not every response to the corruption-busting articles was good. There was vibrant debate around these articles on numerous social media groups, particularly WhatsApp groups.

However, some elements in one group of mostly young freelance journalists were disturbingly roguish.

They berated Nyaradzo for turning down the bribe. They actually accused her of grandstanding by going public about the foiled bribery.

How sick! It’s not flattering already that the bribe masters who approached Nyaradzo are freelancers.

This then tarnishes the image of freelancers, even though, of course, the brown envelope syndrome is also rampant among newsroom-based journalists.

What happened to the National Freelance Journalists Association, by the way? Such a body is vital to regulate the conduct of its membership if it is run by professional people, not wishy-washy characters. And, maybe, ZUJ and VMCZ must consider how to manage the freelancers since quite a number of them are affiliated to them.

This is important to consider. Newsroom-based journalists can be monitored and regulated by their employers. Of course, there are always limitations to what the employers can do considering that corruption tends to be so subtle and covert.

While there was so much energy among journalists and other citizens this past week in debating the brown envelope syndrome, this is not enough. I know that journalists are the loudest lot when it comes to implementation of things.

They are always writing about how the government is long on the mouth and very short on its feet.

This is the time for the journalists to show that they are different by moving beyond the talk.

Yes, there were calls among journalists to set up mechanisms to probe and identify offending colleagues.

The problem, though, is that there was no agreement on how this must be done. And it remains unclear if anything is going to be done about the problem.

I didn’t get the sense that the journalists are keen enough to adopt systematic, professional, logical and calculated approaches to deal with the problem of corruption.

It’s commendable that media organisations and individual senior journalists called for evidence to enable investigations as well as naming and shaming of culprits.

But no-one really bothered to say how this would be done.

Managing cases of corruption is not something that you will do at the Quill Club, at a sundowner or in a WhatsApp group. There is need for sound approaches.

What’s the nature of your mandate regarding this? Does your organisation have specific mechanisms to deal with suspects of media-based corruption? Is this backed by your constitution or documented regulations? How are you going to manage the evidence that’s brought to you? What are the legal considerations relating to your handling of cases of corruption among journalists?

Nobody bothered to address these questions in the heat of the moment. It was just, ah, bring on the evidence. Heh, let’s carry out investigations. Heh, let’s form a commission of inquiry, and so on, and so forth.

Just as a reminder, the media is supposed to be an overarching watchdog. You can’t carry out this heavy and challenging mandate without getting your ducks in a straight row.

• Tawanda Majoni is the national coordinator at Information for Development Trust (IDT) and can be contacted on tmajoni@idt.org.zw