Friday, August 10, 2007

Zanu PF and the art of managing leadership challenges

Not The Headline I wrote

I cannot take responsibility of the above headline because I do not publish my articles, which in this case seems to freak a lot of people. That headline was written by the editor of NewZimbabwe.com not Kuthula Matshazi.
I am sensitive to this freaking out because people are reacting to a certain framing of the story which I did not mean and did not write. Put that way, I would agree that it could suggest that I am being unnecessarily partisan in my approach to analysis of the issue at hand.
My headline for the original story (see below the original story) I submitted for publishing was "LEADERSHIP CONTESTS DEFINE 2008 ELECTORAL FORTUNES". I cannot be held responsible for how the NewZimbabwe.com editor ultimately decided to frame my story "Zanu PF and the art of managing leadership challenges". This is a wrong way of framing my story and have communicated this to the Editor of NewZimbabwe.com. I hope he will only be professional enough to make amends.
The problem with putting such a changed headline of the story is that it changes the tone of and structure of the story to sound as if I am exhaulting one party at the expense of the other when what I am only doing is making a balanced analysis based on facts on the ground.
Even if the change of the headline was done with good intention, it still has the unintended consequence of communicating something that I did not mean. I chose and always choose headlines very carefully because they demonstrate and frame the story in the way I mean it to be understood.
While I still stand by my analysis I believe there is need for fairness in approaching the issues we deal with.

Kuthula Matshazi

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