Where No News Is Bad News

The information minister of Zimbabwe has told his parliament that his country cannot afford investigative journalism. “We do not believe in it because it encroaches on the privacy of people, thereby eroding one of their basic freedoms, namely the right to privacy,” Witness Mangwende was quoted as saying. His government, he added, remains committed to press freedom, “But we cannot afford the wholesale publication of inaccurate news items or those that will tear up the fragile social and political fabric of our new society.”

His comments came in the wake of reports in a Zimbabwe newspaper that high government officials allegedly had been involved in a car-buying racket. The editor of the government-run newspaper was removed from his position after the publication of the report. The charges came at a time of growing concern in Zimbabwe about allegations of spreading corruption.

As you might expect, we think that the minister has things the wrong way around. In our business the abuses of freedom of the press are the subject of deep regret. But the balance of history as we read it suggests that corrupt politicians pose a greater threat to the social and political fabric of nations than do irresponsible editors. Indeed, there can be appropriate legal protections of privacy that do not at the same time shield public servants from scrutiny.

Zimbabwe stands as an important symbol among the new nations of Africa, showing remarkable economic progress while sustaining a multiracial society. The relative independence of its press is an important safeguard to control the corruption that threatens to corrode the efforts of President Robert Mugabe. The need for press freedom is evident in the experience of the continent, where in most nations the press is little more than an extension of government propaganda, complicit in abuses of power that have handicapped development. Paradoxically, the freest and most responsible press has been that of the pariah of the continent, South Africa. Even under the national-emergency censorship rules that were imposed in 1986 it preserves substantial independence, with more diverse views than in the press of most of the other African nations.