NEWSMAKING PRACTICES AND PROFESSIONALISM IN THE ZIMBABWEAN PRESS

Abstract

This article examines newsmaking practices and professional cultures in the Zimbabwean press. It explores the extent to which journalists make independent professional choices in the context of organisational, occupational, and wider contextual demands that shape and promote specific newsmaking cultures. The paper argues that the country's polarised political terrain and journalists' struggles for economic survival in the context of a severe economic crisis have spawned practices that provide context for (re)examining the relevance of the predominant Anglo-American epistemological imperatives of journalism in Africa. Thus, while on the surface daily journalistic practices in the Zimbabwean press typify the prevalent and somewhat universal professional normative ideals such as balance, impartiality and fairness, a deeper analysis reveals discrepancies that counter these established ideals. To this end, the claim that professional journalists subscribe to the generic normative ideals of objectivity and associated journalistic notions perhaps generalises what in fact are differentiated newsmaking cultures.

Keywords:

• editorial policies
• moonlighting
• news beats
• professionalism
• proprietary demands
• sourcing routines

Notes

1. It is important, however, to note that as I concluded the present study the government was in the process of considering applications for licences to publish newspapers from a number of private media houses including the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), the publisher of the Daily News and The Daily News on Sunday.

2. Epistemology in this paper is used in the limited sense of “knowledge-producing practices … that operate within a [particular] social setting” and not to refer to the “philosophical inquiries into the nature of true knowledge” (Ekstrom, 2002, p. 260).

3. This study was part of the author's broader ethnographic research which sought to examine the use of new technologies in Zimbabwean print newsrooms. While observations generally provided insights into the professional interactions, organisational cultures, and how journalists conceive of their daily practices, in this article I use observation data mainly to confirm or refute statements from interviews which form the greater part of the article's empirical data.

4. Due to the political unpredictability of the research context and the sensitivity of some of the responses provided by interviewees, I have deliberately avoided using their names, referring only to their generic titles in place of actual names in order to protect their identity. In the same way, I have attempted to replace definite identifiers with more general non-traceable descriptions where journalists specifically requested this.

5. At the time of conducting fieldwork for the present study, many foreign news organisations deemed hostile to government policies in their reportage had been banned from practising journalism in Zimbabwe.