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 Where a person's refusal to take part in a programme means that the audience may wonder why a contributor or organisation is missing, explain the reason for the absence in terms that are fair to the absentee. Zimbabwe: refusing to take part - by Joseph Winter, BBC News Online, former Zimbabwe correspondent. It is extremely difficult to be fair and impartial in a conflict when one side constantly insults you, calling you and your employer racists and imperial stooges. And covering the ongoing story in Zimbabwe became even more difficult when government ministers refused to talk to the BBC. Threats and fear Some Zanu-PF activists took things even further during the occupation of white-owned farms and threatened to assault journalists working for anyone other than the state media. Two Zimbabwean journalists were abducted and tortured by the military after writing about an alleged coup plot. Four more were beaten with bicycle chains by soldiers when covering anti-government riots in October 2000. But letting this cloud your reporting would be falling into an obvious - if very human - trap, which certainly happened in some coverage of Zimbabwe. Obtaining the government's view No-one can ever be completely fair but my colleagues and I still strived to report the government's point of view. If the ministers wouldn't comment, we would use anonymous officials or sometimes the state-run newspaper, which acts as a government mouthpiece. Or just say that the government refused to comment. Of course, reflecting the government's stance did not stop us from reporting the facts. If these contradicted what the government said – as was sometimes the case – then juxtaposing them was a more powerful indictment of the government than ignoring it. When the information minister said that 70,000 people had turned out for an election rally by President Mugabe in an opposition stronghold, a colleague reported this next to the stadium's official capacity of 12,000. Trust The BBC World Service and BBC News Online have built their world-wide reputations on fairness and impartiality. Residents of countries like Zimbabwe, where the state media toes the government line and ignores the opposition, feel they can trust us. If we merely did the opposite, we would lose the respect we have built up over the years. Robert Mugabe has a strong moral case for land redistribution, even if his methods leave a lot to be desired. This is why we as journalists must do our best to reflect every point of view and subject all sides to equally rigorous examination. This may make telling the story more difficult but it means we do not unduly build one side up, only for the public to be shocked when their inevitable failings are exposed. |
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