ABSTRACT

In many African countries, including Zimbabwe, journalists have been subjected to various policy regulations that have widely been criticised for making the practice of journalism difficult. Part of the reason has been the advent of competitive politics that have left the ruling regimes scrambling to limit freedoms and stop opposition onslaught on their power. One way the Zimbabwean government has limited freedom of expression has been through the introduction of the Interception of Communications Act, a surveillance regulation law that has had a chilling effect on the practice of journalism. This paper utilises Pierre Bourdieu’s journalistic field as theoretical lenses, focusing on the concepts of journalistic field to explore how journalists have been affected by the threats posed by this law in their daily newsgathering and production activities. The study is based on qualitative interviews with Zimbabwean journalists and civil society activists with an interest in the media, sampled from the private print media. The article argues that state surveillance has disrupted the journalistic field in the country by damaging the relationship between journalists and their sources, thus compromising one of the basic tenets of journalism. Journalists can no longer follow the widely held newsgathering routines as a result of state surveillance policies. Furthermore, investigative journalism, which was already under pressure from political influence, has been further eroded. We argue that Zimbabwe journalists need to develop reporting practices that expose surveillance and find creative ways to negotiate and resist surveillance.

摘要

在包括津巴布韦在内的许多非洲国家，新闻工作者都受到各种政策法规的约束，这些政策法规因使新闻实践变得困难而受到广泛批评。部分原因是竞争性政治的到来，使统治政权争先恐后地限制自由并制止反对派对其权力的猛烈攻击。津巴布韦政府限制言论自由的一种方式是通过引入《截取通讯法》，这是一项监管条例，对新闻业产生了令人生畏的影响。本文利用Pierre Bourdieu的新闻领域作为理论视角，重点关注新闻领域的概念，以探讨新闻工作者如何在日常的新闻收集和制作活动中受到该法律的威胁。该研究基于对津巴布韦新闻工作者和对媒体感兴趣的民间社会活动家的定性采访，这些采访来自私人印刷媒体。文章认为，国家监视破坏了新闻工作者及其消息来源之间的关系，从而破坏了该国的新闻界，从而损害了新闻学的基本宗旨之一。由于国家监督政策的缘故，记者不再能够遵循广泛使用的新闻收集程序。此外，已经受到政治影响的调查新闻业进一步受到侵蚀。