CIO blocks lifting of Daily News ban?

again. Jonathan Maphenduka, a former member of the Media and Information Commission (MIC), stated in a High Court affidavit that the members agreed June 16 there was no legal reason to deny a licence to Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, publishers of the banned Daily News, which was the countrys top-selling daily. Maphenduka said MIC chairman Tafataona Mahoso stalled over publicising the decision and it was later reversed. The Financial Gazette, quoting impeccable sources, said the ban was maintained at the instigation of the CIO (which has since taken control of the previously independent Daily Mirror). If these claims are established as fact, it will also establish beyond reasonable doubt that the MIC and its chairman are mere biased appendages of government under state security control whose purpose is to gag the independent media, and particularly The Daily News, Zimbabwes media watchdog said. In its report covering Nov. 21-Nov. 27, the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) added: The MIC and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act that created it are clearly the instruments of a police state, put in place to silence all democratic expression. Coverage of the Nov. 26 Senate elections was strictly according to plan in the state mouthpieces. For example, ZTV allocated 72 minutes and 25 seconds to campaign stories. Of this, Zanu (PF) got 68 minutes and 10 seconds (94%), the divided opposition Movement for Democratic Change received three minutes and five seconds (4%), while The Multiracial Open Party and the Zimbabwe Youth Alliance shared the remaining minute, MMPZ said. At the end, when Zanu (PF)s inevitable landslide victory was hailed, the state media simply ignored a key fact: the announcement by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) that just 20% of registered voters had bothered to vote. The monitors said that the private media did try to examine critically the electoral process, bemoaning among other things the secrecy surrounding the critieria used to demarcate constituency boundaries. The Zimbabwe Independent quoted ZESN chairman Reginald Matchaba-Hove as saying that under the boundaries for the Senate elections the MDC would lose, even where it had won some seats in the disputed March elections. Instead of reporting Air Zimbabwes running out of fuel as symptomatic of the general economic mismanagement, the state media blamed company executives and presented the authorities as coming to the airlines rescue. The private media were more forthright. For example, the Independent said the crisis exposed poor corporate governance and the administrative inadequacies in President Mugabes government. The MMPZ said that the soaring cost of the few remaining newspapers and of radio and TV licences has turned access to any kind of information into a privilege for the few who can still afford them. ZBH recently increased its radio and TV fees from about $1 000 to between $20 000 and $650 000. In January it cost less than $100 000 a week to buy the mainstream newspapers, it now came to at least $530 000, well beyond the reach of most Zimbabweans.