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afrol.com, 21 September - The government is to appoint an advisory panel to review the legal environment of broadcasting in Zimbabwe, taking into consideration the constitutional requirements and advances in media technology. The Minister of State for Information and Publicity, Jonathan Moyo, said in Harare that this will be the first step in opening up the airwaves. The National Media and Advisory Panel would comprise experts in all aspects of broadcasting, including social scientist and experts in new media technology, such as satellite broadcast, internet and terrestrial broadcasting. Moyo said that out of this process, the government would initiate a green and white paper to enable the public to make an input into the policy. This policy would be incorporated into legislation. He went on to say the policy was expected to be taken to Parliament not later than the second session. On the liberalisation of the airwaves, Moyo said: "Liberalisation is a political and not a legal concept. Taken to its extreme, it might mean nutties should be given as much room as Christians, and certainly any democratic society cannot tolerate that...what the Government is committed to is ensuring that we come up with a legal information and broadcasting environment that opens up for more local participation and also complies with the provisions of the constitution". Commenting on Capital Radio's urgent application to the Supreme Court in April this year, Moyo said it would be a dangerous precedent to have the courts usurp the powers of the Government in such a sensitive area. The government has since August this year been giving mixed messages regarding the opening up the aiwaves. On August 11, Moyo told a press conference that government was not considering opening the airwaves. He said that instead the Government was urgently reviewing ways and means of ensuring that the ZBC was fully empowered to carry out its public mandate by meeting technological and material requirements in keeping with the global broadcasting trends. On August 26, at a MISA-Zimbabwe AGM, the Minister said that the government was not planning to liberalise the airwaves because it had already done so soon after independence. Moyo said that as a result of that liberalisation, there had been many players in the broadcasting section, some of whom had folded. On June 14 this year, the Zimbabwe Supreme Court rejected an urgent application by a prospective independent radio station, Capital Radio, to nullify section 27 of the Broadcasting Act. The Court also rejected the demand by Capital Radio that it be issued with a licence to broadcast in Zimbabwe within 10 days. In its judgement, the court dismissed the application, saying there was no urgency to issue Capital Radio with a broadcasting licence since Government had taken enough steps to amend the Broadcasting Act. The application by Capital Radio with respect to overturning certain sections of the Broadcasting Act would still proceed as a normal application, but no date for the hearing was set.
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