Constructive Journalism and COVID-19 Safe Nation Narratives in The Herald Newspaper: Implications for Journalism Ethics in Zimbabwe

Abstract

AbstractThe coverage of crises such as the global health pandemic, COVID-19, is to a large extent guided by national interest, journalistic culture, and editorial policies of media outlets. This chapter argues that the state-controlled newspaper, The Herald, in Zimbabwe deployed constructive journalism as an approach to report COVID-19. Constructive journalism is about injecting positive angles into news reports whilst abiding by the core news values of accuracy, impartiality, and balance. The findings reveal that constructive journalism elements of solutions orientation, future orientation, and explanation and contextualisation were frequently deployed by The Herald to advance a safe nation narrative whose objective was to prevent public hysteria in the face of a deadly COVID-19 outbreak in the country. The chapter concludes that the deployment of constructive journalism in less developed countries like Zimbabwe to inspire hope through positive psychology in the face of global crises does not always yield the intended outcomes.