IN THE PRESS

ONE of the stragglers in the lunatic fringe called the private media, News Day, reported last week Wednesday that MD C-T councill or Weston Ma si ya had died.

May his dear soul rest in peace, and may the Great Comforter be with his friends and family in such trying times.

But it is how the story starts that is most startling. NewsDay called the late Masiya a “political prisoner ”. How is that so?

Well, apparently Ma si ya was last January slapped with a two-year jail term by Kwek we provincial magistrate Mr Ngoni Ndua after he was found guilty in court of engaging in violence during an anti-Government demonstration. He had been admitted at Kwekwe General Hospital for about a week before he died. So, did engaging in violence make Masiya a “political prisoner?” No!

He was duly found guilty by a court of law of engaging in acts of violence and he was sentenced to two years in prison. That made him a violent criminal, not a political prisoner. If we want to play with words, we could call him a political violence prisoner.

It is this kind of duplicity that exposes the luna tic fringe in the private media.

They evidently support political violence as long as it is perpetrated by opposition types. When these violent opposition types get their comeuppance, the lunatic fringe tries to repackage them as “political prisoners”.

This is one of the reasons why very few people buy their products( ask the Zimbabwe All-Media Products Survey for confirmation of this ), and why they are character is ed as the luna tic fringe. And this is more than an issue of semantics. It cuts to the core of the private media’ s approach to violence, whether politically-motivatedor otherwise, and says a lot about the commitment of the luna tic fringe to building a peaceful, stable society.

As we approach elections, this dangerous support of violence by the luna tic fringe must bewatchedoutfor.

And then there was the non-story by another straggler of the lunatic fringe. This one screamed something about Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s “victim” speaking out. And what did this non-story say? It said the“victim” had no comment.

Any wonder why fewer and fewer people are forking out precious dollars to read theirjunk?