What drives media bias? (The Herald)

By Reason Wafawarova in SYDNEY, Australia

14 December 2009

THE acridity of media bias against Zanu-PF by those who are dying to see the disintegration of the party led to a sullen and gloomy coverage of the party’s just-ended People’s Congress.

It does not take a genius to establish that the media units, that just fell short of declaring the Congress an Armageddon, were biased, and that their bias was an act of glomerating the demise of Zanu-PF in line with the political interests of Western governments and the West’s proxy, MDC-T.

In my childhood, I used to eavesdrop on conversations involving my uncle, then Zanu-PF chairman for Chiredzi District, and politicians like the late Cde Eddison Zvobgo, Titus Maluleke, Henry Pote and others. It was so exciting each time these VIPs visited my uncle’s humble abode in Runyararo Village in Triangle; and what came out of almost every conversation was that the politicians exclusively and only talked factionalism.

The many times this writer was kicked away from the six-chaired wooden round table for listening to “elders’ stories” were those times when the plotting against the rival group in the other faction would be too egregious for the ears of a schoolboy.

My uncle, who is now a Zanu-PF councillor in our Ward 12 in Bikita West, will testify that factionalism in Zanu-PF was at its fever pitch even that way back in 1984, and throughout the 80s when he (my uncle) rubbed shoulders with some of these Zanu-PF stalwarts.

The point here is that the ebullient speculation that Zanu-PF is just going to collapse because its cadres are factional is exciting but plainly baseless. The unbiased way of reporting the problem of factionalism in Zanu-PF is to investigate its context, its impact and its potential to split the party.

Speculating that some youths would chuck out the party’s Presidium at the Congress without any backing evidence other than “our mole at the Congress” or “our sources”, will not help in as far as reporting the exact position of Zanu-PF is concerned.

Some reports even suggested that Sadc was on alert to invade Zimbabwe to “thwart the youths” who supposedly wanted to topple President Mugabe at the Congress. That was the MDC-T mouthpiece that styles itself as The Zimbabwean; going extremely over the top in the world of hallucination.

The question is, are the media in reality mouthpieces of political powers and governments for which they express sympathy?

The MDC-T has argued that it does not control media units such as The Zimbabwean, SW Radio Africa and Studio 7, and indeed the Western governments that fund these media houses have also claimed a clean hands position on this matter.

While it may be true that the MDC-T and Western governments do not necessarily raid newsrooms of these media units demanding certain stories to be run and so on, the reality is that there is a mechanism by which these political forces influence the media units in question.

It is like asking how the US government convinces General Motors on how to try and increase profits. Such a question may not make a lot of sense. The media, just like General Motors, are either established huge corporations or parasites of such institutions; that is when one looks at such media units as SW Radio or the Zimbabwean. Whatever the case is, the underlying denominator is that the corporate interests for the media and the imperialist elites are the same.

The MDC-T may not have the power to tell SW Radio Africa or The Zimbabwean what to do, like they claim they cannot stop the piracy right now. However, they are assured that these media units will never be interested in exposing that the MDC-T has blemishes of any kind. It is like Rupert Murdoch’s media getting interested in the fact that the Western governments have been involved in genocide in Palestine.

Just like Western corporate media share the same commercial interests with the US government over the control of the Middle East oil resources, and the same political interest over issues of global dominance; these parasite lap dog media units masquerading as Zimbabwe’s ‘‘independent’’ media also share the same political interests of creating a Western client state out of Zimbabwe with the MDC-T. That interest is a funded interest.

There is no understandable reason why these media units should expose the parallel government structures in Morgan Tsvangirai’s office. It was not in their interest to report the 2005 infighting that finally split the MDC into two formations, and they did not report that.

The MDC did not order them not to report anything related to the squabbling. It was just not in their interest or that of their parenting patrons at the BBC and other major Western media giants. If the MDC had issued such an order, the squabbling was probably going to be published in The Zimbabwean — just out of indignation.

It is like the September 2000 intifada in the Palestinian occupied territories. The attacks started on September 29 and on October 1, two days later, Israel started using US helicopters — there are no Israeli helicopters — to attack civilian targets, apartment complexes and so on, killing and wounding dozens of people. The massacre went on for two days and there was no Palestinian fire whatsoever, except for stone-throwing angry kids.

On October 3, just after the deadly massacre, Bill Clinton made the biggest deal in a decade to send military helicopters to Israel. The US media bluntly refused to publish this report, and according to Noam Chomsky, the editors made that decision. Chomsky and others went to talk to most of the editors, and they simply made it clear that they were not going to publish the story. The entire US media just refused to publish this.

A database search for this report only yields one letter in Raleigh, North Carolina. The US government clearly did not tell the newspapers not to publish this story. If they had done so most probably a few newspapers could have published it, just to prove a point.

The media just realised that it was not in their interest to report that Israel, the number one US military base, just began using US helicopters to murder civilians, and the US government complemented this by sending more helicopters.

It was not in the interest of the editorial offices to do that, so they did not. They could not report that Clinton’s progress in the Gaza conflict was the proposed creation of a South Africa of 47 years ago, which still failed.

Clinton wanted the equivalent of bantustans in the occupied territories of Palestine. That was his peace plan, and that is precisely why he was sending those helicopters.

Israel serves the interests of the US as a “logical corollary”, to quote the US intelligence in 1958. This was a corollary for the US opposition to independent Arab nationalism; and Israel could be a force like Turkey, like Iran under the Shah — a force that would control and repress independent forces in the Arab world.

Likewise the MDC-T is a logical corollary of the West’s opposition to Zimbabwe’s independent nationalism. Just like Israel did the US a huge favour in smashing Arab nationalism in 1967, the MDC-T did the West a huge service by amassing 100 parliamentary seats in the March 2008 general election, and by ending up in the inclusive Government.

Israel destroyed Nasser, who was the at the centre of the whole Arab and African nationalist movement, and the MDC-T is supposed to destroy Robert Mugabe, who is at the centre of Zimbabwe’s independent nationalism — as manifested through the agrarian reforms of 2000.

Before 1967, the US did not care much about Israel, as they just did not care about Zimbabwe’s opposition political parties before the reclamation of white-occupied commercial farms in 2000.

But now, the relations with the US are quite firm for both Israel and the MDC-T, so firm that even mere MDC-T activists can walk in to meet Barack Obama at the White House any time.

So the parasite media play along, wailing ululation’s for Obama’s kiss on the cheek of one Magodonga Mahlangu, and celebrating gleefully that Zanu-PF’s Walter Mzembi was denied access to the White House when he went there with Tsvangirai, in his capacity as Prime Minister.

They are not told by either the MDC-T or the US government to behave like this, but it is just within their interest that they show as much bias against Zanu-PF as possible — when they are not cheerleading Tsvangirai and his MDC-T with the blindness of a dead worm.

MDC-T has become so integrated in Western-style politics that they are now indistinguishable. The party is of great value to Western elites. The masses of Zimbabwe are of as much value to the West as are Palestinians or were Rwandans before the genocide.

They can languish under the West’s harsh economic sanctions for as long as the sanctions provide MDC-T with political leverage over Zanu-PF.

The parasite media and the Western corporate media applaud these sanctions and protest vigorously whenever it is pointed out that the illegal sanctions have destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy. They want the finger of destruction to be pointed at Mugabe and Mugabe only.

They find this well within their interests, and they do not need an order from either the MDC-T or Western elites. They will just do it.

The anomalous and whimsical attacks on Zanu-PF as the evil party are well within the interests of both the West and its entire client base — the MDC-T and parasite media units included. Added to these are the auxiliary Western forces coming in the name of NGOs.

The stories and reports against Zanu-PF do not need evidence or verification. Anonymous sources will do. It is when one says something not too positive about MDC-T or Tsvangirai that tonnes of evidence are required.

Tsvangirai himself has been derided and called names for saying the tragic accident that killed his wife Susan, was a genuine accident. With no need for evidence whatsoever, any claim against Zanu-PF by Tsvangirai would have stuck as fact, and anyone in disagreement could as well end up at The Hague for supporting the “murderous Mugabe”.

An MDC-T official can walk into a newsroom with a shiny bright face and claim to be badly bleeding from ‘‘bashing by Zanu-PF thugs’’ and no questions will be asked before such claims make it as headline news. This is how the so-called independent media have lined themselves up in relation to their own welfare and commercial interests.

Zanu-PF has lost substantial support because of its own shortcomings, no doubt about that. The party has made factionalism a culture, and harbours some corrupt people. The chink in the party’s leadership structures has been met with astonishing indecisiveness most of the time.

However, the culprits now seem to hide under the cover that Zanu-PF is derided and vilified unjustifiably by Western media and the parasite media units sucking up to Western aspirations over Zimbabwe. This is sad, disappointing and most unfortunate.

If Zanu-PF does not decide to dissociate itself from those among its structures whose contact is worse than deplorable, then the party can only succeed in destroying itself.

I have seen quite a series of Zanu-PF Central Committee resolutions on “ending corruption” but very little follow-up action on such rhetoric.

It would be sad for a party like Zanu-PF to witness a day when its good cadres are made a minority by crooks.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!