COMMENT - Tsvangirai the intellectual midget indeed. He needs to have his articles written for him. The man is a total stooge, and the MDC is a total western fabrication.
Media lies, "broken limbs" and greed in zimbabwe
Mdelelwa Mdelelwa―Opinion
Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:05:00 +0000
SOMETIMES you hear a stray sentence on the news that makes you realise you have been lied to. Deliberately lied to; systematically lied to; lied to for a purpose. If you listened closely over the past few days, you could have heard one such sentence passing in the night-time of news. — Johann Hari, The Independent, 7 July 2008
Nowhere is this type of spin more prevalent than in the British print media when reporting Zimbabwe.
In the past few weeks alone the Guardian has treated us to an article calling for the immediate invasion of Zimbabwe with the byline attributed to one Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of one of Zimbabwe’s many opposition parties.
When the article was brought to the fellow’s attention, he hastily but incoherently denied writing it and as a result the Guardian took it off its website without any apology to the people of Zimbabwe or the Zimbabwean government. Many Zimbabweans myself included reacted angrily to one of the Guardian’s editors, Siobhan Butterworth’s attempts to defend their position on their CIF.
Siobhan in her eternal journalistic wisdom saw no evil in an Australian James Rose writing cobblers and passing them off as genuine Tsvangirai pieces stating that “In this case, when Rose got the go-ahead for Tsvangirai’s Guardian piece from his contact - an MDC spokesperson who works closely with Tsvangirai - he [Rose] drafted the article without input from anyone else based on what he already knew.
This was unusual but he assumed that because the MDC was in crisis it couldn't do more. He read the finished piece over the phone to his contact, who approved it for publication. Readers may be surprised that some comment pieces are put together in this way”..
However, says Siobhan “this type of ghostwriting can be justified. The critical issue is whether the person whose byline appears on the piece has approved it”. So did the Tsvangirai fellow approve it? Over the phone? Should such a grave matter like calling for the invasion of a country potentially followed by devastation of the magnitude currently underway in Iraq and Afghanistan be discussed over a phone conversation?
And should we infer that once the MDC hits a crisis it always turns to individuals like Rose. Are such people ready to rule Zimbabwe? Yes says Siobhan contending that “The MDC was also in the middle of a political crisis. Tsvangirai had taken refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare after pulling out of the presidential election amid concerns that MDC supporters would suffer intimidation and violence. The comment desk turned to James Rose, an Australian with a background in journalism and a trusted source for pieces from Tsvangirai as he'd supplied a comment piece from the MDC leader in April”.
She says further, “Rose told me he also does pro-bono work for the National Coalition Government for the Union of Burma. "I believe good causes need good copy," he said. He has worked with the MDC on four or five pieces, published under Tsvangirai's name, which have appeared in the Guardian, the Washington Post and the Melbourne Age among other newspapers - one that appeared in the Age, last month, also called for a UN peacekeeping operation in Zimbabwe”
Five pieces on Zimbabwe purportedly written by its opposition leader when they are actually written in the West. Is this not meddling in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs? Is this not proper “mischief” making in Africa?
Dear readers, are the MDC and the former underground nickel mine worker Morgan Tsvangirai ready to rule Zimbabwe? How many Roses will be giving them direction in times of national crises?
The offending piece was taken off the Guardian site without the ceremony or fanfare that attended its publication. But the intended damage had already been done to Zimbabwe’s image albeit with Morgan’s and MDC’s acquiescence.
The Times newspaper, couldn’t afford being left out of this story. It published a fictitious piece complete with a picture the baby Blessing Dube whose legs the ever resourceful Gauteng based correspondent Christiana Lamb said were clubbed to pulp by “Mugabe’s Thugs”.
I remember the triumphant look of an African acquaintance of mine who is a dedicated Mugabe basher, and also a strict convert to R2P. He brought the baby Blessing’s now infamous picture and The Times piece to my attention demanding “Now defend this! Mugabe is killing maiming and raping children yet you dare always defend the dictator. Here is the evidence. He kills his own people for fcuk’s sake man!”
I remember replying that I doubted the story was genuine as maiming children was not a Zimbabwean thing to do. I further earned the man’s ire when I went as far as suggesting that given that the picture genuinely looked like that of a child in extreme distress, it could have been taken anywhere in the world.
How right my hunch. The whole thing has been proved beyond doubt to be untrue. Pity the mother who was tempted by money to use her baby’s illness to such selfish ends in a media war declared on Zimbabwe,.
This puerile form of journalism which Basildon Peta practiced with relish in Zimbabwe at one time is rotten to the core.
The MDC is a foreign entity fronted by black Zimbabwean faces. In pursuit of riches promised by their handlers the MDC in collusion with sections of the Western press are busy soiling our national image to the extent that people like little Blessing’s mother no longer think twice about using a child’s plight to earn a few pennies. This is a new deplorable development. Our people are being turned slowly into animals. People are losing their uBuntu at the Alter of money.
Africa, Zimbabwe where is your pride?
On a personal note: NakaBlessing, if ever you read this I want to say every genuine and patriotic Zimbabwean wishes the best for the tiny tot. Times are hard especially when you have an ailing child. I feel your pain and I am in no doubt millions more do. But to allow your child to be used like this is unforgivable. It is a dastardly thing to do. It is unZimbabwean. You should not capitalize on your child’s misfortune like this especially when it leads to the blighting of the national image. There is a word for it. It is called greed and in this case it boarders on treason.
Open doorThe readers' editor on ... ghostwriters in the storm
ReplyDeleteSiobhain Butterworth The Guardian, Monday June 30, 2008
Article history
When we read op-ed pieces from political leaders, is it reasonable to expect that these are their own words? You don't have to be a West Wing aficionado to appreciate that political leaders employ speechwriters and press advisors. The idea that Tony Blair might once have been found crouched over a laptop, shouting over his shoulder to Alastair Campbell, "I'll be with you in a minute, I've just got to email this column to the Guardian," seems unlikely when you think about it.
On the other hand we expect, if the political figure has not actually put fingers to keyboard, that there is a close proximity between the writer of the piece and politician whose name is on it and we assume that he or she approved it. Comment editors can safely assume that the op-ed pieces from politicians that arrive in their in-boxes have either been written, or read and approved, by them because the sender is usually someone working closely with them - often a press adviser. In the unlikely event that the piece doesn't reflect the politician's views the problem doesn't lie with the newspaper.
When the connection between the politician and the writer is more distant there's no guarantee that op-ed pieces come from the horse's mouth, as the Guardian found last week when Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, disowned a comment piece, with his byline, which called for the UN to send peacekeepers to Zimbabwe. In a letter published in the paper the following day, Tsvangirai said: "An article that appeared in my name published in the Guardian ... did not reflect my position or opinions." Tsvangirai's letter accepted that credible sources had assured the Guardian he had approved the piece but disclaimed it all the same: "I am not advocating military intervention in Zimbabwe by the UN or any other organisation," he said.
The piece turned out to have been ghostwritten by a writer who works with the MDC. Why did the Guardian use an intermediary? "The MDC is a disparate and diffuse organisation," Toby Manhire, the Guardian's comment editor, told me. The MDC was also in the middle of a political crisis. Tsvangirai had taken refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare after pulling out of the presidential election amid concerns that MDC supporters would suffer intimidation and violence. The comment desk turned to James Rose, an Australian with a background in journalism and a trusted source for pieces from Tsvangirai as he'd supplied a comment piece from the MDC leader in April. Rose wasn't paid either time, Manhire told me.
Rose told me he also does pro-bono work for the National Coalition Government for the Union of Burma. "I believe good causes need good copy," he said. He has worked with the MDC on four or five pieces, published under Tsvangirai's name, which have appeared in the Guardian, the Washington Post and the Melbourne Age among other newspapers - one that appeared in the Age, last month, also called for a UN peacekeeping operation in Zimbabwe.
In this case, when Rose got the go-ahead for Tsvangirai's Guardian piece from his contact - an MDC spokesperson who works closely with Tsvangirai - he drafted the article without input from anyone else based on what he already knew. This was unusual but he assumed that because the MDC was in crisis it couldn't do more. He read the finished piece over the phone to his contact, who approved it for publication.
Readers may be surprised that some comment pieces are put together in this way. I struggle with the practice. It's only one step removed from a politician using a press adviser to write for him, but is the voice authentic? With some hesitation I accept that this type of ghostwriting can be justified, particularly when political instability means that it is otherwise difficult for political leaders to publish opinions in major newspapers under their own names. The critical issue is whether the person whose byline appears on the piece has approved it.
The practice may leave readers feeling cheated, so the newspaper should not publish a ghostwritten piece unless it has reason to trust the intermediary and has done all it reasonably can, taking into account the political environment in which the political figure is operating, to get confirmation that he or she has sanctioned it. When things go wrong, as they did in this case, the newspaper must act promptly. As soon as Tsvangirai disclaimed the piece it was removed from the Guardian's website and his letter clarifying his position was published the following day along with a blog post from the comment editor offering an explanation to readers. Those were the right things to do.
And on it goes. Here is an article about another smear from the international media.
ReplyDeletePhoto of baby exposes media excesses
AP Reporter
Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000
NEW YORK (Associated Press) - The New York Times ran a lengthy correction Wednesday after the newspaper learned that a recent front-page photo of a crying Zimbabwean baby boy with casts on his feet misrepresented the child's injuries.
The caption on the June 26 photo said that the boy sustained his injuries from state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe. But subsequent reporting determined that the boy actually had club feet and that his mother exaggerated the injuries.
The boy's mother initially told the newspaper that her son's injuries were caused after youths backing Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe threw her son onto a concrete floor. But she later acknowledged she misrepresented his injuries because she could not afford surgery for his condition, the newspaper said in an editors' note.
In the article published on June 26, she told the newspaper that soldiers for the African nation's ruling party came looking for her after her husband, an opposition organizer, went into hiding.
The newspaper took the boy to a medical clinic in Harare after the picture and accompanying article were published, the editors' note said. Doctors said Monday that X-rays showed no broken bones and discovered the boy had club feet — a congenital birth defect that can turn feet inward.
The boy's mother, in subsequent interviews, told the newspaper that youths did throw her son to the floor, but that she had exaggerated the severity of his injuries. She later said the boy had been wearing the casts at the time of the attack as part of treatment he received elsewhere for club feet.
The newspaper did not name the mother or her son in either the editors' note or the original article. A telephone message left Wednesday with the newspaper's spokeswoman was not immediately returned.
Associated Press
From the New York Times:
ReplyDeleteZimbabweans Make Plea for Help as Runoff Nears
Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print Reprints Share
DiggFacebookMixxYahoo! BuzzPermalink
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: June 26, 2008
Editors' Note Appended
HARARE, Zimbabwe — As Zimbabwe’s neighbors urged it to postpone this week’s presidential runoff, hundreds of beaten, newly homeless Zimbabweans gathered Wednesday outside the South African Embassy here in a desperate bid for help during the electoral crisis.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Back Story With Celia Dugger (mp3)
Timeline: Zimbabwe
Related
The Lede: Mugabe, a Knight No Longer (June 25, 2008)
Ally Warns Outsiders Not to Push Zimbabwe (June 25, 2008)
Security Council Urges Zimbabwe to Halt Violence (June 24, 2008)
Times Topics: Robert Mugabe
Times Topics: Morgan Tsvangirai
Times Topics: ZimbabweBy 8:30 p.m., around 400 people, mainly men displaced by the recent political violence, were pulling down their woolen caps and hunching into thin jackets to sit out one of the coldest nights this winter. Few of them had eaten in the last several days; they began converging outside the embassy in hopes of finding food, water and medical attention.
“The situation is absolutely desperate,” said an opposition official trying to find shelter for 80 women and children at the site.
The scene unfolded amid a scramble of regional and international diplomacy, with many African and Western nations saying the vote set for Friday would be neither free nor fair.
On Wednesday, officials from Swaziland, Angola and Tanzania — the so-called troika empowered to speak for the Southern African Development Community, a regional bloc of 14 nations — called on Zimbabwe to put off the voting because the current crisis would undermine its legitimacy.
Taking a different tack, Queen Elizabeth II stripped Robert Mugabe, the country’s president for nearly 30 years, of his honorary knighthood as a “mark of revulsion” at the human rights abuses and “abject disregard” for democracy over which he is presiding, the British Foreign Office said Wednesday.
The rebukes reflected the mounting international frustration over Mr. Mugabe’s insistence in going ahead with the runoff on Friday, even though his sole opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out of the race on Sunday. Mr. Tsvangirai cited the persistent violence and intimidation against him, his party and their supporters.
Mr. Mugabe’s government has had a long history of human rights abuses, but he was granted the honorary knighthood during an official visit to Britain in 1994 when, the Foreign Office said, “the conditions in Zimbabwe were very different.”
With the widespread attacks on the opposition, the Foreign Office said the honor could no longer be justified. Stripping away the title is exceedingly rare. A Foreign Office spokesman could think of only one other time it had been done: in 1989 with the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Mr. Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, called on the United Nations on Wednesday to send peacekeepers to bring calm and help pave the way for new elections in which he could participate as a “legitimate candidate.”
“Zimbabwe will break if the world does not come to our aid,” he said in an op-ed article published Wednesday in The Guardian newspaper in London.
Mr. Tsvangirai took refuge in the Dutch Embassy here on Sunday. He emerged briefly on Wednesday to hold a news conference in which he proposed negotiations, but only if Mr. Mugabe canceled the runoff first.
“We have said we are prepared to negotiate on this side of the 27th, not the other side of the 27th,” Mr. Tsvangirai said, according to Reuters.
But the American ambassador in Harare, James D. McGee, said that Mr. Mugabe and his party, ZANU-PF, were determined to hold the runoff “at all costs,” according to the State Department.
“We’ve received reports that ZANU-PF will force people to vote on Friday and also take action against those who refuse to vote,” Mr. McGee said in a conference call described by the State Department.
All over the country, destitute people have fled the violence, and are now looking for food, shelter, protection and medical care.
One woman at a church in Harare held her 11-month-old baby, who had casts on his tiny legs. She said that after her husband, an opposition organizer, went into hiding she had gotten word that ZANU-PF supporters were looking for her, too. She fled with the boy.
She returned home the next day, though, and that is when “the youth,” as foot soldiers of the ruling party are often called, came looking for her, she said. They snatched her son from the bed and hurled him onto the concrete floor, shattering his legs, she said.
Afterward, she was too terrified to move. But that night, when all was quiet, she set out for the opposition headquarters, Harvest House, to seek help there. She was able to carry only her distraught child, and the 12-mile walk took most of the night.
Harvest House was bursting with refugees, but she was able to get care at a hospital. Now her son’s legs stick out at an odd angle below his blue romper suit, encased in too-tight plaster of paris.
The woman’s blanket was stolen, and because she has been surviving on one meal a day, her thin skirt and jacket hang on her. Her impossibly thin legs look as if they, too, might snap.
But when she looks at her baby, her strained face softens and becomes beautiful again. For three days the boy has had only water, she said, because her breast milk has dried up.
“I hate Zimbabwe,” she said. “I want to leave.”
Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London, and Graham Bowley from New York.
Editors' Note: July 9, 2008
A front-page picture caption on June 26 describing an 11-month-old boy whose legs were in casts stated that his legs were broken and that his mother said the injuries were caused by an episode of state-sponsored violence in Zimbabwe. After the picture and an accompanying article that also described the injuries were published, The New York Times took the boy to a medical clinic in Harare for help. When the casts were removed, medical workers there discovered the boy had club feet. Doctors said on Monday that X-rays of the baby’s legs showed no evidence of bone fractures.
The mother subsequently admitted that she had exaggerated injuries she said had been sustained by the boy during an attack by governing party militia. In multiple interviews, she said that youths backing President Robert Mugabe had thrown her son to the concrete floor — and she still says that event did occur.
The owner of the house where she and the baby were staying confirmed that marauding youths from the governing party had attacked the house. He said he believed the baby had been thrown to the floor during the attack, but the owner was in a different room and did not witness it firsthand. The landlord, other lodgers, neighbors and opposition supporters also confirmed that the mother had been singled out because her husband was an opposition member.
The mother, however, later told The Times that the boy had been wearing casts even at the time of the attack, as part of a treatment he had received for his club feet at a different medical facility. She said she misrepresented the boy’s injuries to generate help because she could not afford corrective surgery for the boy.