WHY ZIMBABWE'S ELECTION IS BEING IGNORED BY THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
"Nelson Chamisa is embarrassing and Emmerson Mnangagwa is very very dull," is what one American journalist with an international news network put it to me when she called this morning to get an update on the election and sentiment on the ground. It is a stunning turn of events, this complete ignoring of Zimbabwe's 2018 elections by international media. For the first time since 2000, the international media (CNN, BBC, SKY, even China Global Television) are almost completely ignoring the Zimbabwe elections. Haru Mutasa, at Al Jazeera, is the only international journalist who is getting the story of this election out, but in very small drips. Previous Zimbabwe elections were a daily fixture on international news platforms before. Mugabe's rallies were covered on a weekly basis from the week he started campaigning to election day. Tsvangirai was never covered as much but featured as a counterpoint to the fiery rhetoric of Robert Mugabe. This time around, ther...