So, let me start my weekly blabber with a personal account, just to colour things.
More than one and half decades ago, I was chosen as the other of two Zimbabwean editors who joined colleagues from other parts of the continent to tour India.
We were guests of the Indian government and treated like VIPs during the one-week tour that took us to different and highly captivating places.
We went on an eye-opening and memorable trip across the borders to the world-famous mausoleum of Taj Mahal in Agra, Uttar Pradesh.
We visited Mahatma Gandhi’s mystic grave, parliament, the central bank and various commercial projects that include Tata and the aviation factory.
We also attended a day-long military parade to commemorate Indian independence and sovereignty.
And…we stayed in one of the world’s biggest hotels. They said it was grander than a five-star hotel.
Obviously, upon my return, I was going to write impressive pieces on India’s parliamentary democracy, the efficiency of Indian conglomerates, etcetera.
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I was, naturally, never going to write about the seedy slums and brothels of downtown New Delhi.
There were two developments that took place that disrupted my tour intentions.
Upon my return, I had a run-in with an influential representative of the new “shareholder” at the media stable I worked.
“Shareholder” was a trending word at the Zimbabwe Mirror Newspaper Group, which had recently been taken over by central intelligence from Dr Ibbo Mandaza. It meant the ones that had newly assumed control of the papers.
Thing is, I was a wee too independent than what the shareholder wanted.
Because, you see, the dudes had this funny habit of lifting fictitious extracts from the Mickey Mouse script and expecting me to run the stuff as front page news.
But that was always going to be a no-no with me.
So, following the run-in, I angrily threw in my resignation and, luckily, got a contract outside the country immediately after.
The run-in, my resignation and looking for a new job took my attention from the just-ended passage to India.
Then I had a four-day media workshop in South Africa at the same time, so that also disrupted my Indian chronicles.
What happened next is what I want to talk about, as it has a direct bearing on what I want to drive home.
Of course, I never got to write anything about my trip to India.
The embassy complained, and I promised I would write something once settled.
And, when it became clear that the writings would not come, the embassy guys got really angry and that was the last time we talked.
So, you guessed right. Right from the start, it was never about me merely familiarising with, and enjoying India.
Even sun baths are not free.
They wanted me to be part of a chosen team that would market India to the world.
And you don’t fault them for doing that. Everyone and everything needs bits of marketing.
But it becomes problematic when you are a journalist who is supposed to see and tell the world with clear and untainted lenses.
This past week, we saw more than 30 journalists and influencers drawn from Southern Africa visit Zimbabwe.
The journalists and media personalities came from South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
The trip that was dubbed True Zimbabwe Tour, was organised by the South Africa-based MPC Media, coordinated by the Information ministry and funded, apparently, by African Chrome Fields.
It took our visitors to just about all the glitzy spots around the country.
The Victoria Falls rainforest and the famous bomas there, Zambezi National Park, Sate House, farms and mines.
A colleague who is in the team told me that they also went to Kwekwe on Friday, but I didn’t push hard, off my own wisdom, to see if that was to President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Precabe farm.
I defer to all those journalists and influencers. I have directly worked with quite a number of them and will likely work with them in future.
But, if they had sought my advice at the beginning, I would have told them to be careful.
Whatever the case, the red flag of media capture is flying at full mast as regards this.
Have a look, journalists can go wherever they are invited or want to go, including the bottom of the sea. It’s all up to them.
But there are cardinal rules and ethics of the profession that they must not break, no matter how good it feels doing so.
Every serious journalist knows that there are these things that we call impartiality, objectivity, truth and accuracy.
These are things that can never be traded for anything in journalism.
The point is, accepting to be part of the so-called True Zimbabwe Tour was always going to raise all sorts of questions and speculation that true journalists must avoid at any cost.
Let’s just briefly go back to my Indian account. As already said, the trip, it turned out, was transactional.
You see all the nice places and things in India and you give us good publicity.
That looks repetitive when you look at the case of the 30 plus journalists from the region.
A quick disclaimer right here. Nobody is saying Zimbabwe must not be marketed.
I’m Zimbabwean and tired of the bad-boy tag that my country has been suffering for a whole generation.
I need Zimbabwe to be marketed, and I want Zimbabwe to proper.
The question is about agency and context. Let the people who are in marketing do marketing.
Let spin-doctors do the political spins.
A journalist is, in the proper sense of the word, not a marketer.
He or she remains a journalist who must impartially, objectively, truthfully and accurately relay information into the public sphere.
If you find yourself in a situation that compromises impartiality, objectivity, truth and accuracy and you don’t do something about it, you are no longer doing journalism.
You run the risk of getting tainted too.
There is a new term in Zimbabwe, courtesy of the Zimbabwe Media Commission.
It’s commissariat journalism, the type whereby you do the bidding of certain people and institutions with vested interests and pretend that’s journalism.
If you go back to the speech that was given by the Information minister at a banquet thrown for the media tourists, it becomes abundantly clear that there is a spin that is being pegged here.
It was all about how glossily the current administration has been doing things in the past five years.
*Tawanda Majoni writes in his personal capacity and can be contacted on [email protected]
