Destroying Zimbabwe's Independent Media

As the situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate, the regime of Robert Mugabe is responding with horrific brutality against the democratic opposition. Unfortunately, as Reporters Sans Frontieres points out, destroying the last remnants of Zimbabwe's independent media is an integral part of this campaign:

Scheming by Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) is killing off the few remaining independent news media while the government-controlled Media Information Commission (MIC) continues to use obligatory press accreditation as way to pressure journalists in an entirely unacceptable fashion, Reporters Without Borders said today.

“The infiltration of the last privately-owned media by the intelligence agencies has had a disastrous impact on pluralism,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Unable to live with a free press, casting suspicion on the publications they manipulate and paying little heed to they journalists they employ, the intelligence agencies have just helped to undermine the already moribund press even further.”

The press freedom organisation added: “As for the discredited, government-dominated MIC, it continues to practice an utterly unacceptable form of blackmail on the last journalists not to have fled the country, intimidating them and threatening them with unemployment.”


With foreign media such as the BBC having long since been expelled from the country, the Mugabe regime is well on the way to monopolizing all sources of news and opinion.