A milestone for media

The former Soviet leader Leonard Brezhnev is reported to have said: “The trouble with free elections is you never know who is going to win.” When it comes to Zimbabwe, that saying explains a lot.

While the recent agreement between President Robert Mugabe and the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, may prove to be a political breakthrough, for the international media it is already a milestone.

In a country where foreign press and broadcasters are not only unwelcome, but actively prohibited, there were some surprise guests at the party in Harare. As Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai put their signatures to the deal, spectators included Orla Guerin, the BBC’s Africa correspondent. Ms Guerin managed to report from inside the ceremony, even though the BBC and other media remain banned in Zimbabwe. In spite of reaching agreement with the opposition, the government has made it clear that reporting restrictions remain unchanged.

Zimbabwe is not alone in not welcoming international media. Following Cyclone Nargis in March, the Burmese authorities diverted considerable resources from the rescue operation to pursue journalists who were trying to tell the world about the devastation and the authorities’ response. While there are some small signs of change in North Korea, Pyongyang has long blocked access to foreign media. China’s steps to prevent scrutiny following the protests in Tibet earlier this year have been well documented.

However, the Zimbabwe government reserves a particular hostility for foreign journalists. Following the elections of March 29, the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent Barry Bearak was arrested along with two British journalists, Jonathan Clayton from The Times and Stephan Bevan who had been working for the Sunday Telegraph. Writing after his release, Clayton described in vivid terms how he had been blindfolded and handcuffed, deprived of sleep and water, and beaten across the feet and head.

There is history behind what might generously be described as a “complicated” relationship between the BBC and the authorities in Harare. In July 2001, the government took offence at the BBC’s reporting of the government’s policy of land “redistribution”. Correspondent Rageh Omagh and his team were expelled and the BBC’s accreditation suspended. In an ironic twist, the man who banned the BBC was not Robert Mugabe but his information minister at the time, Jonathan Moyo. Today he is an opponent of Mr Mugabe, elected as a member of parliament in March’s controversial election, and now a regular contributor to BBC programmes. Zimbabwe is that sort of place.

Whatever the difficulties of reporting from Zimbabwe, it is not about the bravado of journalists. The safest – and simplest – solution for the western media would be to ignore the story, or to report it from London or Johannesburg. But international news organisations have become increasingly sophisticated at managing operations in places like Zimbabwe – learning lessons from deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. While in Kabul or Baghdad the risk comes from insurgents, in Zimbabwe it comes from the state. It is one thing to try to manage the threat from individuals – you can travel in armoured cars, you can wear helmets and body armour. It is quite another to try to deal with a threat that comes from the army and police.

Nevertheless, whether in Kabul or Harare, the principle is the same; one can never eliminate risk, only manage it to what is believed to be an acceptable level. With each deployment into Zimbabwe, the BBC has learnt more about how to operate there. From 2001, when the BBC was expelled from Harare, we had made fewer than half a dozen trips to Zimbabwe by the beginning of this year. In those circumstances, editorial judgments begin to suffer in a vacuum of information. During the first seven months of 2008, the BBC made more trips to Zimbabwe than during the previous seven years. With each visit, we have learnt more about what is going on, and become increasingly ambitious in our coverage.

Inevitably, any journalist would rather not have to operate clandestinely, in Harare or anywhere else. BBC reporters travelling to Harare have to conceal their true identity. News organisations live or die on the trust of their audiences, so the need to lie to secure access is “uncomfortable” at best, and the decision to deceive requires authorisation at the highest level in the BBC. We need to demonstrate that to do so is in the audience interest, not just of interest to the audience.

It remains to be seen whether the deal signed between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai will deliver a brighter future. The agreement negotiated by Thabo Mbeki, the former South African president, stresses the importance of a free and fair local press but makes no mention of the international media. However, whatever happens, things are unlikely to be the same again. The BBC looks forward to the day when it can return to reporting from inside Zimbabwe legally – the country continues to be one of the key international stories. Until then, we, and the rest of the foreign media, will continue to try to report from inside Zimbabwe, ban or no ban. We owe the dozens of brave Zimbabweans, who risk their lives to help us tell the world what is going on, nothing less.

Article published in the Financial Times on September 25, 2008.