CAN A DECISIVE DIRECTOR GENERAL CHANGE ZNBC?

ZAMBIANS continue to express displeasure at the biased coverage of news by the public funded Zambia National  Broadcasting Corporation ZNBC. In random interviews many citizens openly declared that they had since stopped watching the ZNBC News because it does not depict the correct picture of what is going in the country. We have blogged many times before about the transformative shift needed to redeem the public media in Zambia. To an extent the quality of coverage depends on the leadership at the helm of n institution. Sharon Phiri of Lusaka's Chilenje said the following;

"I think when PF just won there was a bit of improvement we saw Daily Mail also covering the opposition even ZNBC under Chibamba Kanyama had really improved. We saw how new reporters brought some creativity and even the opposition had a bit of coverage unlike now where ZNBC only runs responses to what the opposition said without allowing people to hear exactly what was said."

Zambia's largest opposition party The United Party for National Development UPND has taken a swipe at the ZNBC Director General and squarely blames him for the continued decline of professional reportage standards at the public service broadcaster.

In a recent statement UPND chairperson for Information and media Charles Kakoma described ZNBC as spineless and shameless.

"When Kenya liberalized the airwaves, immediately the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) was relegated to number 4 on the broadcasting houses rating. The reason was simple, KBC had become a propaganda arm of the Government. 

This is the stage or worse that Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) has become. Actually it is worse because to start with Richard Mwanza has no journalism experience . 

Our main concern is the conduct of the Director General who allows citizens to be insulted by his benefactors without giving those citizens an opportunity to defend themselves.

We cannot have a so-called national broadcaster that foments hate speech. 

We are constantly under attack from people that have no idea what UPND is doing. 

All of a sudden ZNBC has found people that can speak authoritatively about UPND. 

Richard Mwanza is the major architect of this nonsense that is coming from ZNBC, yet they call themselves a national broadcaster. 

ZNBC under such leadership will never be the likes of broadcasting stations around the region. 

Zambia had the first TV station in 1947 but you look at the quality of the programming, it cannot match any of the newly established stations like Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC). 

Without tax-payers money that station under the dismal leadership of people like Richard Mwanza would be bankrupt.

Furthermore, the Director General is ignoring his own ZNBC Producers Guidelines issued in January 2015, which states that there will be equal and fair coverage. If the Director General has any morality he should resign forthwith."