Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, who has been accused of destroying the media by appointing his “puppets” as editors of State-owned media, yesterday said Zimbabwe’s media was useless. If you read it, you will remain ignorant. “We have a media that is practically useless. If you rely on it for information about the state of the country, you will be by choice putting yourself among the ignorant, you won’t know what is going on by reading the media,” Moyo was quoted by The Herald as saying. “Normally….. if you want to know the political environment of any country, you look at the topical issues as they find their expression in the media……If you were in a normal situation, you would then have kind of developed a picture or some understanding of what the political class is quarrelling about in our country and from that you would have been able to glean the issues of the moment and the characteristic features of our political environment. But if you have done that, if you have exposed yourself to our media, I am sure you would have been very disappointed because our media does not reflect our quarrels as a country in a manner that is informative. Most of the time our media reflects what some political players behind media houses would like the public to know as opposed to letting the public know what is going on,” Moyo said. It was not clear whether Moyo was also disgruntled with the State media which some have accused of being biased towards the new Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front administration. The state media has particularly been antagonistic towards former Vice-President Joice Mujuru and those alleged to belong to her faction. The private media, on the other hand, has become a mouthpiece for disgruntled members of ZANU-PF and sees nothing good coming from the new administration though it has been in office for barely a month.
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