Relations With Foreign Media and Governments
The Zimbabwean press at times has strained relations with foreign press and governments. Governments from neighbouring countries such as Botswana and Zambia, as well as Tanzania who have a tense relationship with Zimbabwe, have regularly protested against attacks on their countries by Zimbabwean state media. The government also banned many foreign broadcasting stations from Zimbabwe, including the BBC, CNN, Sky News, CBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Channel Four, ABC and Fox News. However, restrictions were lifted in July 2009, meaning the BBC and CNN could again operate in the country, however other aforementioned Western news media organizations are still forbidden to operate. News agencies and newspapers from other Western countries and South Africa have also been banned from the country. Other stations that were allowed into Zimbabwe, such as Al Jazeera, were told to be "more objective" in their reporting by the Zimbabwean government during the presidential election.
Rising media fees for reporting in the country have also caused condemnation from foreign journalists claiming that freedom of expression will deteriorate. The Ministry of Information claimed the rising costs were necessary to prevent foreign journalists for "distorting stories".
Read more about this topic: Zimbabwean Media
Famous quotes containing the words relations, foreign, media and/or governments:
“If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure—the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Was I not born in this Realm? Were my parents born in any foreign country?... Is not my Kingdom here? Whom have I oppressed? Whom have I enriched to other’s harm? What turmoil have I made to this Commonwealth that I should be suspected to have no regard of the same?”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why—but the editorialists forget it—terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very foundations are set. The defense of religion, of democracy and of good faith among nations is all the same fight. To save one, we must now make up our minds to save all.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)