THE role of the Press has been in the spotlight of late following a number of changes on the local media scene. One upshot is the arrival today of the Zimbabwe Independent, a new business weekly which promises to “tell it as it is” with regard to the news and which offers a selection of forthright views on issues of the day.
In addition to a team of experienced reporters we have recruited the country’s top economists to bring you a weekly analysis of current trends.
Incorporated in the newspaper is the Independent Weekender carrying entertaining reports and a variety of leisure activities including local and international sports for a wide cross section of readers. Many familiar and prominent columnists will be featuring here as well as within the main body of the newspaper.
Our letters page will provide an open forum through which our society can debate national topics and ventilate their hopes, fears and frustrations. A healthy society is one that has few skeletons in the cupboard and no sacred cows.
But it is of course in the area of accurate news and informed comment that we propose to establish ourselves. In a society where news has traditionally been massaged to accommodate the claims of a governing elite, and where views have been expressed in the straitjacket of indulgent perspectives, telling it as it is should in itself represent a refreshing change.
The Zimbabwean reading public has more recently developed a taste for bold reporting combined with robust views, a taste we intend to satisfy. The old pattern of deferential journalism has over the years represented a manifest disservice to the country leading to the cycle of debt and decline we find ourselves in today.
Lack of criticism or alternative ideas on political direction and economic development in the past encouraged a politically over-ambitious but intellectually under-resourced government to venture into the quick sands of a command economy and one-party state, the vestiges of which continue to prejudice democratic diversity as the recently concluded presidential poll so clearly demonstrated.
While we undertake not to engage in thoughtless criticism of the government, and indeed may offer an occasional pat on the back for any successes registered, we will nevertheless hold our rulers to account.
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Those managing vast sums of taxpayers’ money are obliged to account for how they disburse those funds. Far too much has been lost, stolen or squandered in recent years and we are, as a society, immeasurably poorer as a result.
We therefore pledge ourselves to expose misgovernance and corruption wherever those twin evils manifest themselves. That includes the corporate world. Mismanagement and corruption, no matter who the culprit, increase the cost of business.
The duty of the media is therefore to exercise vigilance on behalf of the public and to promote better governance. That includes identifying reforms that benefit both the performance of government and the conduct of business.
But equally pertinently it involves the cultivation of an informed public aware of its rights and resistant to intimidation or blandishments by politicians accustomed to bulldozing their often ill-considered projects across a prostrate nation.
Zimbabwe’s performance as a society depends upon an outspoken Press. We promise to be that — and much more.
