Harare – Zimbabwe’s independent Tribune weekly on Wednesday lost its court bid to return to the newsstands, a month after it became the third newspaper to be shut down in a year. Justice Tendai Uchena of the Harare High Court ruled that the Tribune had committed irregularities and that the official media commission was entitled to revoke its licence. “The first applicant [the publishers of the Tribune] committed two offences for which the penalty of cancellation could be imposed,” Uchena ruled, adding that the decision by the Media and Information Commission “is within its discretion”. The state media commission, which registers all newspapers and journalists in the country, cancelled the Tribune’s publishing licence on June 10 for a year. It accused the paper’s new owners of breaching the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act by failing to report ownership changes to the commission, as well as employing an unregistered journalist.

The Tribune appealed against the commission’s decision, saying it had shown bias and that the breaches of the law did not warrant such a hefty penalty. But the judge noted that the commission is “expected to punish and control those who contravene provisions of the Act”. Under Zimbabwe’s strict press laws, all journalists and newspapers have to be registered and the media commission has to be notified of ownership changes. The Tribune is the third Zimbabwean newspaper to be shut down in less than a year. The decision means that the Tribune’s 60 full-time staff and 200 street vendors will be out of a job. Last September, the Daily News, a popular newspaper that was a harsh critic of President Robert Mugabe’s government, and its Sunday edition were shut down for operating illegally. The Tribune’s publisher, Kindness Paradza, who is also a Zanu PF lawmaker, had described the action by the media commission as “unjustified and unlawful”. Zanu PF is President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party.

Source: WWW.ZwNews.Com