Media Monitors has launched a report on “Assessment of the media’s coverage of the electoral period” with main findings revealing that ZANU PF received 53% coverage on the mainstream media.

Addressing journalists at Media Centre in Harare, Media Monitors Director Patience Zirima said, “they monitored the mainstream media from 31 May 2018 to 22 July 2018 to assess the fairness and balanced coverage of political players, the media’s role in informing the public on electoral processes and professional and ethical conduct by the media”.

“There has been limited diversity in the representation of political parties as the top ten parties with the highest amount of coverage were covered 92% of the time, which meant the remaining 39 parties only shared 8% of the publicity,” said Zirima.

She added that women political actors were under represented in election coverage.

“Women made up just 11% coverage in the monitored media while men accounted for 89%. Most women’s visibility was in the national commercial radio stations, which accounted for 28% of the visibility,” said Zirima.
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“Youth political actors were extremely marginalized during the electoral period and their voices were heard in just 4% of the coverage of political actors. They were the least visible age group in election related discourse across all the monitored platforms. Local commercial radio gave the most coverage to political actors aged between 18 and 34 as they made up 13% of the coverage,” reads the report.

“In political advertising, ZANU PF dominated adverts on all radio stations and ZTV. The cost of advertising probably hindered less established political parties without similar access to resources. ZANU PF and Emmerson Mnangagwa dominated advertising in the print media. A total of 22 adverts were counted on ZANU PF, and 20 of these featured ZANU PF presidential candidate”, said Zirima
The report concluded that ZANU PF dominated in all respects, from news reporting, current affairs and advertising. While opposition parties, particularly MDC Alliance received more favourable coverage in private media and these media were relatively balanced in their representation of the ruling party.