Perspective: Journalism in rags, plastics

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Stephen Mpofu
PERHAPS few, if any, professionals that deal directly with the public face the same credibility litmus test as does journalism, in both its print and broadcast or electronic formats.

Mass communication media boast awesome power to reduce dysfunctional mountains to molehills and vice-versa if the latter exhibit an unflinching desire for freedom, peace and stability to engender social, political and unimpeded economic advancement for the masses as an organic unit.

Thus, whoever first pinned the tag Noble Profession on the back of journalism must have been persuaded to do so by an indication of journalism’s elevated character as depicted by the transformative role that the profession plays in the lives of people per se.

Which suggests that journalists should anchor a government in power in its custodial role by exposing weaknesses or wrongs in the government’s discharge of its duties to the nation, whether those dysfunctional situations are in policy formulations and administration or in the promulgation of laws that affect media or the general populace.

Such criticism might appear harsh but as long as it is made in the interest of peace and the advancement of one Zimbabwe one nation, for instance, it must be accepted as genuine by those to whom it is directed.

But let this cardinal point not be lost on anyone in either the mass media or in the political opposition: a government in power has a superstructural role to play in society and whatever criticism is made its prime purpose should be to help promote good, or righteous governance in order for peace, justice and accountability to not only be done, but be seen to be done by those in power at a particular period in time and for the good of the nation as a whole.

In other words, opposition parties should desist from using journalism as knobkerries with which to butcher their opponents in power to create space to occupy that power themselves.

Such obscene hunger for power at any cost serves no meaningful purpose in the maturation of a nation’s political system.

Journalism is the right vocation for the right people — people with a bent for journalism and not those who happen into it because “there is nothing else better” for them to do.

In fact, if roles are reversed the new incumbent in power will not tolerate the politics of power for power’s sake.

Yet World Press Freedom Day four days ago found the Zimbabwean press in a situation devoid of journalism’s touted nobility. This is because there is nothing noble whatsoever in a press house that is polarised with so-called private media and the public media virtually at each other’s throats and informing the public of the goings on in the country in a similarly divisive manner but converging on issues that may be counted on one hand.

The regime change agenda pursued by the West as a reprisal for the Zanu-PF government’s land reform programme is also tragically being pushed and to local journalism’s disgrace by some Machiavellian parties hungry for power, and power at any cost.

This unfortunate situation has seen the intrusion in this country of a journalism dressed up in fragmented half-truths, or garbed in plastics or falsehoods.

This dysfunctional brand of journalism informed by a misguided belief that because journalism has the power to transform societies, it can also be used to change progressive thoughts to negative ones to try to achieve set objectives, however, detrimental to national cohesion, peace and stability that these might be.

Communicology describes journalism as an Art, a Science and a Humanity.

These values must necessarily blend in with the roles of informing, educating and entertaining that journalism plays in any society.

As a humanity journalism deals with human beings and so the information passed on should bear facts that are subject to scientific verification, while as an art the stories published should be aesthetic or beautiful to arrest the readers’ interest for their retention.

As anyone should know, something interesting or entertaining is captured and not easily forgotten, fulfilling the educative role of journalism.

That today journalism has lost part, or much of its nobility, depending on one’s perception of the power of that profession may partly be due to Robin Hoods waylaying the profession.

Journalism is the right vocation for the right people — people with a bent for journalism and not those who happen into it because “there is nothing else better” for them to do.

That is one aspect of journalism which one might aptly describe as the oxygen of a people, every people on this planet for their peace and stability and for their unimpeded social and economic emancipation.

As such, nations without that oxygen are wont to be choked by the carbon dioxide filling the empty space instead as it where.

Be that as it may, incessant calls by scribes for press freedom should be matched with responsibility so that the balance works well for the public at large.

However, any reform in the media, legal or otherwise, will only achieve desirable goals if journalists in both the public and the so-called independent media houses do not function like a yoke of oxen and donkeys pulling in different directions and in the process leaving behind ugly banks on which weeds choke any crops planted for the health and general good of our nation.

For that reason, Zimbabweans working for foreign media should be patriotic in the coverage of the country and not appear to be agents of enemies of this nation by putting the money they are paid before the security of their motherland, as is often the case by some of these correspondents who manufacture falsehoods to suit the interests of their paymasters.

Such reckless self-distanciation lumps up such writers in question together with Zimbabwe’s sworn detractors.

On its part and for both its own good and that of the ruled, government should accept press criticism made in good faith, however, harsh the censure might appear to be at first.

Any intolerance to genuine criticism as a show of who is who in the power game does not augur well for a state-partnership as a sine qua non for national development.

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