Zimbabwe has lifted the reporting ban on BBC and CNN allowing the news organisations to report freely from the first time in 8 years. Minister for Media, Information and Publicity, Webster Shamu said the government and the BBC had now “acknowledged the need to put behind us the mutually ruinous relationship of the past”.
In a letter to the BBC, minister Shamu said: “We agreed that whatever communication problems which the BBC and the officials of the Zimbabwe government may have had in the past, the Zimbabwe government never banned the BBC from carrying out lawful activities inside Zimbabwe.
“For the purpose of the record, I restate the main points of our meeting. We acknowledged the need to put behind us the mutually ruinous relationship of the past”.
BBC’s world news editor, Jon Williams said : ” We are pleased we have been able to reach an agreement and we look forward to being able to operate legally in Zimbabwe.”
This is a welcome development in the process of rebuilding Zimbabwe. Media organisation should be able to operate freely and legally without fear of politicians. They have a duty to provide the public with balanced and unbiased information. Exposing all those things our politicians would rather prefer we never get to know about.
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