althily swooped in the middle of the night on at least 250 homeless people camped at Tsiga, bundled them into trucks and dumped them at the notoriously squalid Hopley Farm.
But the Daily Mirror showed the stamp of its new owners, the Central Intelligence Organisation. While the others reported the removal as a violation of a court order banning the authorities from moving the Tsiga people unless accommodation was provided, the Daily Mirror did not. Instead it appeared to endorse the eviction, and passively quoted a Harare City Council spokesman as saying it was illegal for the settlers to remain and also detrimental to the city and themselves.
The once-privately owned paper then proceeded to give a glowing report of the purported benefits of the so-called rebuilding programme, and failed to press Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo about the confusion and delays, and why the authorities had finally decided to accept UN help after rejecting it, said the MMPZ.
The Mirror did, however, join The Financial Gazette, Studio 7 and SW Radio Africa in revealing that the authorities had defined another court ruling by illegally extending the tenure of the commission running Harare.
Coverage of the Movement for Democratic Change split mostly did not go beyond rehashing the insults exchanged by the two sides, with little attempt to verify any of the allegations, or to examine the real source of the problems besetting the opposition party, the media watchdog said.
The Herald, however, was particularly keen on ridiculing Morgan Tsvangirai, giving prominence to statements by rivals portraying him as a power-hungry, materialistic dictator without establishing the veracity of his claims.
The Chronicle, state-mouthpiece daily in Bulawayo, however, carried a fair representation of a Tsvangirai rally in the second city. It said that about 5,000 people attended, while the rallies in the city the same weekend by the MDC faction which is taking part in Senate elections flopped due to poor attendance. The Herald put the attendance figure at the Tsvangirai rally as scores.
However opposed to Tsvangirais boycott of the Nov. 26 Senate elections, the state media was having nothing to do with campaign activities of the 26 people running on an MDC ticket. The official media virtually ignored their campaign activities, or reported them only in terms of the feuding, while Zanu (PF) campaigns were reported in a positive light.
On the collapsing public services in cities, the MMPZ said the state media continued to present this as being the fault of MDC-led councils.
Post published in: News