MEDIA SUSTAINABILITY IN THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENT
BornwellChakaodza Memorial Lecture, May 4 2016, VMCZ, Harare.

By Dumisani Muleya, Zimbabwe Independent Editor

Greetings,
IT’s a great privilege for me to be invited to give this speech in honour of a man whose legacy in the media will always remain be with us; for Bornwell Chakaodza stood for media freedom, professional and ethical journalism. Integrity and honesty – key values in the media – were part of his professional life.He was a gentleman of sound professional integrity. I say this not with vanity, but conviction.

I feel an extra buzz of pleasure and closeness to Chakaodza not only because we worked together but also for the reason that we were good friends, although we were of different generations.

Whenever we had time, we engaged in conversations spanning social, political and economic spheres, and other relevant subject matters. Of course, we spoke a lot about the media in general and our own environment and attendant dynamics in Zimbabwe, in particular.

As a fellow journalist, Chakaodza was honorable; he was a good and fair man – much loved in media circles, especially for his straight talking. I’m going to adopt that straight-talking style today because we have some lessons to learn on the media from the last couple of years.

It might seem indulgent to go back over old ground, but if we don’t talk frankly and constructively about these issues we will ignore opportunities and risks concomitant to media sustainability and that won’t help us.

So I’m going to use a “tell-it-like-it-is” approach, although this may inevitably ruffle some feathers. I won’t go deep into the past, but will only refer to it for context, background and clarity on issues where necessary.

The significant thing about this event is that it comes every year around May 3; a date on which we celebrate fundamental principles of press freedom, while evaluating media freedom around the world and planning how to consolidate gains made and keep at bay threats to this great profession.

So many gains have been brought by technology and innovation. The convergence of media platforms which technology has brought now enable the media to distribute their content – news, information, data, photos, audio and videos – to far larger audiences around the world.

We now use social media metrics – which measures the basic output of content-generation – to support new strategies and constantly reshape models. The good thing is analytics and sophisticated data sets now take the guesswork out of our understanding of audiences’ behavior and needs, as well as our performance.

Social media metrics helps us, for instance, to measure the following:

Activity: The output of our social media teams;

Reach: Our audiences and potential audiences;

Engagement: Interactions and interest in our products;

Acquisition: Creating some networks of relationships;

Conversion: Our team actions, sales and results; and

Retention: Satisfied customers and brand evangelists.

Although the digital age in which we now operate has given us boundless opportunities to extend the frontiers of media freedom, development and democracy,which are connected, the same technological revolution has also brought with it upheavals and existential threats to the media.

Current business models in Zimbabwe and elsewhere are being challenged by the new ways people communicate and consume content, thanks to hi-tech innovations.

The convergence of media and entertainment on cyberspace – the information and data superhighway – and the world of telecommunications has triggered disruptions and accelerated changes in consumption and advertising distribution patterns.

Not only has the industry had to move towards the digitisation of products, services and distribution channels, but it has had to do so while struggling to create engaging customer experiences and reducing costs.

Those who want not only to survive, but also thrive in this new media environment will have to embrace technology and change, while ensuring creative destruction. The name of the game is simple: disrupt yourself internally and adjust to survive, or be rudely disrupted from outside and risk extinction.    

The media upheavals, triggered by a revolution in technology,are transforming, fundamentally and irrevocably the operating environment, as well as nature of journalism and its ethics.

The means to publish is now in the hands of citizens, while the internet encourages new forms of journalism that are interactive and immediate.

So our media ecosystem and the terrain itself has now become a chaotic landscape evolving at a fast and furious pace.

Professional journalists now have to share the journalistic sphere with online hacks, tweeters, facebook enthusiasts, bloggers, citizen journalists, and social media users in general.

The political economy of the media has changed dramatically. Media organisations are now struggling as audiences migrate online, while advertisers lag behind – creating a disequilibrium which brings instability in relation to the supply, demand, and prices of media products.

As we speak Zimbabwe’s media sector is going through serious economic times as leading companies, including Zimbabwe Newspapers Group (Zimpapers), Alpha Media Holdings (AMH), Associated Newspaper of Zimbabwe (ANZ) and the state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), are forced to retrench, slash salaries and embrace convergence as part of restructuring, downsizing and cost-cutting measures for survival.

The declining in traditional print readership and profits in the mainstream media, as audiences migrate online has caused newsrooms to shrink their staff and sizes. Media houses, including AMH, are struggling to pay workers on time because of a growing gap between their cost structures and revenue bases due to structural changes on the media landscape, technological advances and a struggling economy.

Our media houses are in turmoil, grappling with demands to adapt to rapidly changing innovations and commercial models that affect their businesses.

The way we now gather, produce and distribute news and content is undergoing radical changes which have disrupted old operational and business matrices, including the selling and consumption of news.
Everyone has not been spared Zimbabwe and the world over.

ZBC — which has no local competition to talk about — has been badly struggling over the years.

However, part of its multifaceted problems are attributable to extended periods of mismanagement and corruption.
In order to adjust and survive, media houses have taken measures to cut costs through retrenchments, removal of benefits and changing business models.Streamlining is the only way out.

Several issues emerge out of this.

One of them is that we now have to let innovation drive the development of new media products and services, which means effectively utilising new technologies across the full spectrum of the media publishing matrix.

This requires thorough analysis of the market and competition, developing a clear vision and strategy to pursue profitable innovation, strategic change implementation and management, re-engineering, turnaround and transformation, growing dynamic organisational cultures and structures to achieve desired results, as well as cost-reduction and financial alternatives, especially during challenging economic situations like the one we are going through in Zimbabwe.

Disruptions affect the viability and strength of the media. Moreover, they have serious implications for ethics, professional standards and regulation. Investigative journalism also becomes one of the major casualties of the current shifts and changes on the media landscape.

A strong media is critical for every society or country. It is of vital importance to Zimbabwe. So the media needs to be protected not only from these disruptions, but also from political and commercial influences, as well as special interest groups.

Furthermore, shrinkage of newsrooms creates anxieties about the future of the media and journalism. Yet these disruptions also prompt new initiatives such as non-profit centres and branded investigative journalism.

Due to viability problems, poor remuneration and delayed salaries, journalists in Zimbabwe are now increasingly compromising ethics. Professional standards are no longer observed as they used to.

As a result, the quality of writing and reporting is going down, partly because professional journalists, amateurs and laypersons operating online now co-exist as anyone can wake up and publish, unfortunately in the name of journalism.

Craft literacy in media and journalism is being decimated mainly by those who want to be in publishing and considered journalists when they are willing or unable to follow established codes of ethics and professional standards.  
Digital publishing brings with it distinct ethical problems, practices and norms. It raises a host of thorny and troubling ethical questions and challenges for journalists and media practitioners, whether professional or citizen. 

Yet at the same time we must accept that every revolution brings new possibilities and threatens old practices.

So the central question here is to what extent are existing media ethics still suitable for today’s journalism – a journalism of amateurs and professionals? Do we need a new code of ethics or not since the current principles were developed over the past century?

As the media newsrooms and budgets shrink, the investigative journalism has suffered a great deal. This is exacerbated the fact that genuine diversity and pluralism in Zimbabwe largely exist in the print and online media.

Broadcasting still remains a preserve of the state and its associates. Broadcasting licences are not issued transparently and fairly – only allies and cronies of the system get them. Some of them don’t even have the basic infrastructure, resources and skills to use the licences, yet those are key requirements in getting licensed in the first place. 

Investigative journalism is very important.

It goes beyond conventional news reporting which depends largely and sometimes entirely on materials provided by others; it is fundamentally proactive and not reactive. That is why it is enterprising reporting; usually original, innovative and ground-breaking.

Investigative journalism goes beyond daily reporting, single-source writing, paparazzi coverage and leak journalism to embrace a proper watchdog role which reveals, through research and digging,exclusive stories and in-depth articles in the public interest.

So as part of our survival technique, we need quality journalism. That is the way forward.

In terms of the state of media freedom and the operating environment – things that Chakaodza was greatly concerned about – the situation has somewhat improved, yet serious threats linger on.

The new constitution guarantees media freedom and freedom of expression, and this is part of the incremental gains which we have registered through bruising battles with the current government. The only problem though is that government is taking forever to finish realignment of laws, including media statutes, with the new constitution.

All repressive and archaic laws like the criminal defamation legislation, which has been declared unconstitutional,must be struck off the statute books. A number of these press laws still remain, hence media tyranny effectively continues undiminished.

But the biggest threat to media survival now is the economy. Well, this means the current regime remains the biggest threat to the media since it is the architect or author of this economic crisis.

Old habits die hard, so they say. From time to time journalists are still threatened and arrested, not for criminal wrongdoing but for merely doing their job. And as we have seen in recent times every journalist is at risk, not just private media reporters as it used to be the case.

We have heard of late threats against journalists, for instance for reporting on President Robert Mugabe’s health, foreign trips or age; pressure and intimidation over such mundane things, or indeed bullying for reporting on security issues.

Only recently Mugabe threatened to gag journalists and all other Zimbabwean citizens Chinese-style through stringent internet and social media controls, claiming there was abuse of cyber-platforms. This reminds us that latent and sometime brazen threats to be media remain abound.

Structural changes in the media also have regulatory implications.

Our position on media regulation is very clear:governments should never be given space or an opportunity to control media.
That’s not their job.

Freedom of the press is part of our constitutional right and government has no right to interfere in regulation of the press. There should not be any media laws which curtail media freedom. While we know media freedom, like other freedoms, is not absolute, we don’t need government to regulate the media. We can do it ourselves.

So we want self-regulation, we do it ourselves; we set up our own regulatory system, our own rules and we decide how these rules look like and how they are implemented.

This means the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe should sit at the heart of the regulatory process, not a statutory body. I’m not saying this because they invited me here, but out of conviction. Co-regulation is another serious possibility, but in our environment and given our dreadful experiences of unjustified and threats and arrests in the past 16 years, self-regulation remains the best option. 

And now the invitation to all media stakeholders: we might have won some battles in the campaign for media reform so far, but the war hasn’t been won yet. We should celebrate the incremental gains and learn from them, but we have to continue to engage and fight for reform and a democratic operating environment.

I have no doubt Chakaodza would have accepted the invitation without qualms or fear.
Thanks so much for patiently listening, and hopefully you found this worthwhile.

God bless you all, thank you.

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