"When it happens we will NOT be there!" is more apt

Ztv news motto "When it happens we will be there", captures one of the characteristics of news, that is, timeliness. It implies that events will be relayed to the audience as they happen. But is this what they are doing?

The answer can be both yes and no. Ztv can be said to be living up to its motto when one looks at the coverage of news events within Harare and its environs. These are relayed to the audience immediately. However, the same cannot be said of events outside Harare.

Viewers only get to know of events outside Harare a day or two after they have occurred. In some cases Ztv would have been overtaken by the rumour mill and by then the news would have ceased to be news. In other words, the news would be stale news.

In cases where they manage to cover the news immediately the viewers only get to hear a voice recording of the reporter over the telephone and for visuals they are shown the face of the reporter or a file tape from the archives. This again shows that Ztv is failing to live up to its motto because news is a total package hence the need for the report to be accompanied by relevant video footage.

In addition to the above, it appears that sometimes they deliberately ignore some newsworthy stories. The strike by health professionals at government hospitals, teachers and university lecturers at the beginning of this year is a case in point. Ztv deliberately ignored it as if to say it was not a newsworthy event despite the fact that it stretched over a number of days and caused serious disruptions in service delivery. In other words the coverage it was given was minimal and not worthy of an event of such magnitude. This again shows how Ztv’s practices are not in tandem with its motto.

Besides the above, Ztv’s attempts to report regional and international news from a Zimbabwean perspective is proving is fraught with many challenges due to lack of the necessary wherewithal to send their own correspondents to the various African and world regions so they can literally be there when it happens. As a result they have to rely on the western news reports and video footage themselves packaged from an ideologically specific perspective which a voice over by often inexperienced Ztv reporters won’t do much to change.

It is also here where Ztv’s failure to live up to its motto is exposed. In most cases western or regional news stories are accompanied by old video footage. This is most evident in stories to do with Iraq and Somalia. Concerning the recent heavy fighting in Somalia between the Ethiopian backed Interim government forces and the Islamists, Ztv continues to use the same video footage of gun totting militias day in and day out. The story would be recent, which is fine, but the video footage would be old. Recent news stories must be accompanied by recent video footage to make a total news package. Those pictures by western news agencies portray Africa from the western-centric viewpoint using often condescending if not denigratory metaphors that the Ztv news would be trying to subvert by putting its voiceovers. The gun totting militias send out the message that Africa in the absence of the west’s civilizing influence is a continent of civil strife and disorder and by using the same footage Ztv actually capitulates to the West’s largely negative portrayal of Africa.

It can therefore be said that due to a plethora of challenges ranging from lack of adequate financial resources to lack of skill and expertise, the Ztv has largely failed to live up to its motto and it has also failed in its effort to give regional and western news a Zimbabwean perspective.

By Albert Chibuwe- PgDip in Media and Society Studies student-MSU.