The Coverage of bond notes by the newspapers "Newsday" and "The Herald" (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Communications - Media and Politics, Politic Communications, , language: English, abstract: This study analysed the coverage of bond notes by Newsday and The Herald between November 2016 and August 2017. Qualitative research design was employed. The research instruments included archival collection, content analysis and interviews. Interviews were used to back up the research findings of content analysis. The research population comprised of online archived newspaper articles from The Herald and Newsday between November 2016 and August 2017 which were purposively sampled. Media academics and journalists from Newsday and The Herald were also conveniently sampled so as to support research findings from content analysis.

This study found out that the public and private wrestled for attention on setting perceptions in their coverage of bond notes, showing their biases. The Herald is more pro-government while the Newsday is accused of being pro-opposition and by being so, contrasting discourse emerged from these two publications. In this research, it was also found out that patterns of the media control, bias, and partisanship influenced what could be reported on bond notes. The Newsday painted a negative view of bond notes between December 2016 and August 2017.

The findings reveal that the Newsday launched an attack on the government's introduction of bond notes, condemning them as a consequential failure. The private media portrayed bond notes as failure by the government to properly address cash crisis and also framed them as causing despondency, chaos and anarchy and the return of 2008 era of economic hardship. On the other hand, The Herald focused on justifying the significance of bond notes while defending their weaknesses. It is recommended that the Print media in Zimbabwe should desist from bias and their reportage of issues should reflect a high level impartiality, objectivity, truthfulness and fairness.