Elements of tabloidisation evident in Zim media

The Zimbabwean print media is slowly but surely trudging towards tabloidisation. By tabloiddisation I mean the tendency to focus on sensational and sometimes trivial stories. This is a feature of most western newspapers which focus on the lifestyles of celebrities such as members of the royal family, David Beckham; Nicole Kidman; and Naomi Campbell to mention but a few. The launching of The Trends magazine; Sunday Mail Entertainment, Sunday News Leisure magazine and even the inclusion of some sensational stories in the main newspapers point towards tabloidisation.

Another feature of tabloidisation is the absence of public interest in most or all of these stories. The Sunday Mail of 15-21 April and The Herald of 13 April 2007 carried stories on World Bank President Wolfowitz’s scandalous promotion of his girlfriend and the subsequent pressure on him to quit. Of what interest is this information to the Zimbabwean audience? In what way does it impact on them? Other stories that quickly come to mind are in the same issues mentioned above on David Beckham’s wife drinking alcohol as a way of gaining appetite and, Prince William’s split from his girlfriend Kate Middleton. Again these stories though interesting are surely not of public interest if they have any relevance at all to the Zimbabwean audience.

Apart from instances cited above, the wide coverage given to Studio 263’s Denzel Burutsa’s (Jabulani Jari) relationship with and marriage to Chipo Bizure (Eve), their subsequent divorce and confrontations drives home my point. The way the story was covered in the local media reminds one of the O J Simpson saga and the hounding of the late Princess Diana by the paparazzi which eventually led to her tragic death. Of what value was this story to the audience? Was this not an invasion of the two’s private life? The coverage was so thorough especially, one of the episodes in which they allegedly had an altercation such that one wonders whether the two were ever left to enjoy their privacy. This leaves one with more questions than answers: In what ways did the media contribute to their divorce? Had they been left alone from the onset, would they have split up? The case of Tinopona Katsande and her boyfriend also testifies to my assertions.

In Katsande’s case the media started speculating about their split after Katsande moved back to Harare. In The Herald of 13 April Katsande and her boyfriend ridicule the media speculations. What effect is media coverage likely to have on their relationship? The case of Burutsa and Bizure, Rocqui and Pauline (who divorced) leaves one wondering whether Katsande and Ncube’s relationship, Selma Mtukudzi’s relationship with the younger Manatsa and Muwengwa’s (Nevernay Chinyanga) marriage will withstand this intense media gaze, (in Chinyanga’s case the Sunday Mail reported that his wife had an altercation with her husband’s alleged girlfriend in a supermarket)
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Media voyeurism is also evident in Makanaka’s case. The media created her by giving her prominence. And now the same media is mercilessly destroying her and committing infanticide with impunity despite the fact that she is just a teenager who happens to have fallen out with the same media, which “created” her. This merciless predatory tendency was evident in the cartoons of Makanaka in The Sunday Mail of 11 March in which she was shown taking a swipe at the Girl Child Network.
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The Zimbabwean media should instead focus on matters of public interest. The stories cited in this article had no value in them, that is, in relation to the generality of the audience. It is high time the media redefine its role in the Zimbabwean society and start focusing on pertinent issues such as ways of improving the economy and society’s well being. In addition they should help break up the polarization of the Zimbabwean society rather than help in the further division of society, and focusing on trivial issues.

By Albert Chibuwe PgDip in Media and Society Studies –MSU.