(MISA/IFEX) – “The Daily News” editor-in-chief Geoff Nyarota is likely to face legal action this week if Jonathan Moyo, the minister of state for information and publicity, goes ahead with his threat against him over a “false” story he allegedly published. This will be the first time the government will have implemented the controversial Access […]
(MISA/IFEX) – “The Daily News” editor-in-chief Geoff Nyarota is likely to face legal action this week if Jonathan Moyo, the minister of state for information and publicity, goes ahead with his threat against him over a “false” story he allegedly published.
This will be the first time the government will have implemented the controversial Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act against “The Daily News”, Zimbabwe’s only independent daily.
Moyo accuses “The Daily News” of misrepresenting a story it reported on in its Friday 22 March 2002 edition. The story claimed that the joint African Caribbean Pacific-European Union Parliamentary Assembly (ACP-EU) passed a resolution calling for a fresh presidential election in Zimbabwe at a meeting held in Cape Town, South Africa, on 21 March. In a letter written to Nyarota, the minister asked the paper to make a retraction over the “deliberate falsehood” or face legal action in terms of Section 80(1) (a)(b), which deals with the abuse of journalistic privilege. Subsections (1) (a)(b) state: “A journalist shall be deemed to have abused his journalistic privilege and committed an offence if he falsifies or fabricates information and publishes falsehoods”.
“Under the circumstances and in the belief that your false claim is as a result of ignorance and not political mischief, I am writing to ask you to publicly correct your falsehood and give the public correct information based on the proceedings of the ACP-EU Assembly meeting in Cape Town,” Moyo said in the letter.
Nyarota received Moyo’s letter on 26 March and said that he would rather go to jail than retract a true story. “I would rather go to jail, if it pleases the honourable minister, than be forced by him to correct a story that is 100 per cent correct,” Nyarota stated.
The act stipulates that anyone who contravenes the three subsections shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding 100,000 Zimbabwe dollars (approx. US$1,829) or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years.