Mediating the 2000 Elections in Zimbabwe: Competing Journalisms in a Society at the Crossroads

Abstract

This article analyzes the framing of the 2000 elections in Zimbabwe through editorials and selected front page news reports in selected Zimbabwean newspapers. It argues that three models of journalism, namely, “patriotic,” “oppositional,” and “independent nationalist” were applied in framing the election. These models were the offspring of a society at political crossroads, where public life became bifurcated, and where the press became one of the most visible sites of struggles for control of the state. The article further argues that though the models represent different public spheres ahead of the election, the media framing of the election narrowed—rather than broadened—the scope of public debate. The dramatic shifts in the political economy of the country—including the formation, suspension, and (re)negotiation of alliances between political parties and fractions of capital and civil society—meant that all were interested in one way or another in controlling the national media and its framing of the 2000 election.