Zimbabwean Media Lagging Behind In Arts Appreciation

By Raisedon Baya

The standard of arts reporting and critiquing in Zimbabwe is, to say the least, very poor. With the way things are one can safely conclude that the media’s association with the arts has failed to lift the status of arts in the eyes of the public. Instead certain circles of media have perpetuated certain negative attitudes inherited during the colonial era. During the first twenty years after independence local artistes did not make headline news, unless dead or involved in a serious accident or scandal. Local arts stories were reduced to mere paragraphs hidden inside pages of different publications. On television we only got to know of local artists through the low budget local productions where artists like Safirio Madzikatire with his Mukadota Family and Felix Moyo with Kukhula Kokhuphela became household names.

While local arts had no space in local newspapers and even on television international artists from Hollywood and Europe were making huge headlines and commanding full page stories. This created in our people an attitude that local art is substandard and not good for consumption. This is why even today our people still find it hard to buy local art products preferring international ones. Today local youths can tell you the complete biography of some funny American singer with some gangster name or give you the current top 20 hits in America and yet the same youths cannot even come up with two or three names of local singles on the local top 20 charts.

The negative attitude towards things local is slowly changing, especially in the public media. Many thanks to the 75% local talent policy which arm twisted public media houses to turn to local artists first. The 75% policy was not a total success for two reasons. The percentage was too high for a sector that hardly had anything ‘broadcastable’ on the shelves. Secondly, there was no investment by both government and the private sector in the arts to meet this 75% content demanded by the policy and in the end programming became an unbearable bore. However, the idea behind the policy was excellent. It is what the arts needed   - policies that push for proper respect of the arts and investments in the sector.

While silently applauding the 75% policy we cannot ignore the fact that it did nothing to change the editorial policy of the independent and private media, especially with regard to arts and culture. The same dismissive attitude towards local artists remains entrenched in a lot of media houses. For how else can one explain a publication that splashes Beyonce Knowles’ half naked body over half a page with no accompanying story and then goes for four to six months without a local arts story? What can we say about media houses that get invited to local arts events, promise a story and deliver nothing?  It is not mere promotional stories that the arts seek for from the media. There is a possibility of great collaborations, great business opportunities and developmental work that could result from the arts associating with the media and vice versa. However, these possibilities have never been explored in Zimbabwe.

The second problem is lack of journalists knowledgeable in arts matters. The concern among the arts sector in Zimbabwe is that most arts journalists do not seem to understand the very sector they are supposed to be writing about. And those that would have gained some basic understanding have been moved to either the hard news or business desks. The arts sector is where most aspiring journalists cut their teeth, so to speak. There are no rules, no standards to maintain, no role models to emulate. This is the sector where anything and everything goes. Arts journalists’ efforts, as reflected by their stories, show serious weaknesses. There is lack of research, lack of arts appreciation, and a total absence of the art of critiquing in the stories. The arts sector needs journalists and art critics that can enrich it with insightful thinking, progressive views, and critical perspectives. It needs journalists with enough clout to change the way our people see the arts – journalists who are not going to take every bit of information they receive at face value. These journalists and critics must also be able to demand better works from artists, something that is not happening at the moment.

Raisedon Baya is an award winning playwright and arts critic based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.