Slight improvement on coverage of women candidates

General Observation

Following the previous week’s observation, there was a slight improvement in the media’s coverage of women’s issues, although a lot more needs to be done. In addition, there is need for improvement in terms of ethical issues including objectivity, balance and fairness.

Coverage of Female Politicians

• Some media seem to have taken slight heed to the need for gender sensitivity in their coverage of elections. For example, The Standard of 16-22 March 2008 carried a front page article featuring Fay Chung, one of the female Parliamentary candidates. Furthermore, female candidates were also featured on ZTV’s main news bulletin during the course of the week.
• The Arthur Mutambara led Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), needs to be commended for flighting an advertorial that is centered on the call for women empowerment.
• Nevertheless, more needs to be done in terms of ensuring that female voices are well represented in the media. For instance, there were only two stories of female candidates appearing on ZTV’s main news bulletin over the past two weeks. The weekly newspapers, including The Zimbabwe Independent did not have much on female candidates
• In its token coverage of female politicians, ZTV continues to confine itself mostly to Zanu-PF male candidates.


More from Tsvangirai and Makoni.Is this enough?

• There has been an up-surge in ZTV prime time campaign advertorials from opposition political parties and independent candidates. While this is a positive development, concern has to be raised on how the opposition’s appearance on national television is being largely restricted to these advertorials whereas prime time editorial appearance is to a large extent, a preserve of the Zanu-PF presidential candidate.
• It is perhaps important that the media carries out a research around the impact of these advertorials. The research must, among other issues, consider that 60% of the county’s registered voters are based in rural areas where a greater number have no access to television

“Mugabe, Mujuru end Alliance”: The ethical dimension


• This was the front page lead story for The Standard of 16-22 March 2008, which raises many questions around journalistic ethics.
• Appearing to be more of an opinion piece, the story is largely based on unnamed sources
• The story also lacks clarity on the purported end of the alliance between President Mugabe and Retired General Solomon Mujuru
• Such stories have become the order of the day in most media outlets and they raise questions as to whether journalists still remain committed to the ethics of the profession.