Press release/ 10th April 2014 ZACOMEF ON COMMUNITY RADIO STATIONS TO RELAY ZNBC NEWS The Zambia Community Media Forum (ZaCoMef) the umbrella body for all community media organizations in Zambia wishes to reject the suggestion by government to the effect that community radio stations should relay ZNBC news. ZaCoMef believes that community media and indeed community radios in particular are created to inform, educate and entertain the communities of their localities with broadcast of issues affecting them and close to their hearts. ZaCoMef believes ZNBC as a public media which is not only funded by tax payers but that charges the people of Zambia K 3 for TV license should flat out on its huge financial muscle to extend its signal coverage to the flung areas where it endeavors to have presence. We urge all our members country wide to refuse this idea as we all know that the content of ZNBC news is since time immemorial full of political propaganda statements. ZaCoMef doesn’t want community radios to be used as propaganda for any one or any institution or nay political party but want community radio stations to remain impartial and professional. Since government is claiming to have received requests from community radio stations for them to relay ZNBC news, we challenge it to disclose the names of those radio stations. We have phoned all our members and none of them has shown willingness to the idea. In any case, relaying ZNBC news can be done just like other international channels are being relayed on broadcast media without any request to them. This shows that there is something behind this so called relaying of ZNBC news initiative. In this vein, we advise our members to instead utilize Zanis news which they can easily sieve and only air news items which they feel are of human interests and are of national character. ZaCoMef however urges government to take legislation to parliament that will provide for funding of community radio stations. This way the said funding shall not be a ladder by politicians and ruling parties to abuse community radio stations. Community radio stations have been struggling with funding and sometimes fail to pay salaries to its workers yet they are serving the grassroots more than the national media. We therefore feel this is what government should be preoccupied with instead of ZNBC news relay. By
Posted on: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 16:03:43 +0000
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