STAFF WRITER • 31 August 2013 10:44AM • 12 comments
HARARE - Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) yesterday suspended the editor of NewsDay, Constantine Chimakure, after the daily published two articles that the newspaper itself admitted suffered “ethical infractions”.
Chimakure was suspended over two stories carried in the paper on Wednesday and Thursday titled “Mbeki speaks on Zim polls, chaotic land reform”, and “Mugabe offers Tsvangirai VP post.”
Both stories have been strongly denied by MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and former South African President Thabo Mbeki.
“We feel the stories fell short of the basic journalistic standards set in our ethics guidelines; how we put accuracy to the test, the AMH Code of Ethics and the AMH Pledge whose tenets are fundamental to our operations,” AMH editor-in-chief Vincent Kahiya said yesterday.
Surprisingly, Chimakure professed ignorance of his suspension yesterday, saying he was yet to be served with any such papers as he was on his way from a funeral in Chivhu.
But AMH said it would appoint an investigator to probe the “acts of misconduct” and if Chimakure had a case to answer, “the editor will be charged in terms of the AMH Code.”
This is not the first time that NewsDay has run into editorial headwinds in the few years that the newspaper has been on the street.
Chimakure is the fourth editor of the paper in three years after his predecessors Barnabas Thondlana, Vincent Kahiya and Brian Mangwende were removed unceremoniously by the trigger-happy proprietors of the paper.
The media house’s staff were also recently reported to be very unhappy after the company sent a notice to workers detailing the staggering of salaries, amid claims that morale among staff was very low at both its Harare and Bulawayo offices.
Alpha Media Holdings is partly-owned and funded by the New York-based Media Development Investment Fund, which also supports Trevor Ncube’s Mail & Guardian in South Africa.