Zimbabwean journalists yesterday joined their colleagues from the rest of the world in celebrating World Press Freedom Day.
Yesterday’s event was held under the theme, Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of expression as a driver for all other human rights.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day since its proclamation in a bid to achieve a free press and freedom of expression around the world.
It is a day in which journalists take stock of the road travelled, the hits and misses and how they could have done better.
Other than informing, educating and entertaining, the media holds the powerful to account. They shine the light on darkness, exposing the excesses of the leaders.
Thomas Jefferson could not have summed it up better on the role of the press when he said: “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
The local media landscape has land mines despite moves by the current administration to make the environment more favourable.
Media violations are still in place in which journalists are barred from covering certain events.
There are fears such violations will spike once campaigning for the upcoming elections gets into full swing. There are fears it could turn violent when push comes to shove.
Our appeal to the government and law enforcement agencies is to allow the accredited journalists to do their job. There is no accreditation, which supersedes the press card that is issued annually.
Journalists should be allowed to do their work, unhindered by forces against development.
The media sector is on the brink with players struggling to break even. The deteriorating environment has seen companies cutting their advertising budgets. Advertising revenue is the lifeblood of the media sector.
The low revenues have seen media houses employing cost cutting measures as they cut the coat according to the size of the cloth.
The biggest casualty of the cost cutting measures has been newsgathering. Genuine journalism is expensive and fake news is cheap as Toomas Hendrik Ilves once said.
The changing environment brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic has seen a change to digital from print which behoves media players to be agile to harvest more under the new normal.
There are concerns over low salaries in the sector, which has affected the morale among players.
This has been worsened by the absence of the National Employment Council (NEC) for the media sector to do collective bargaining. In the absence of the NEC, journalists are on their own.
