Calm down Geoff, in your own interest

By Stanley Gama | Daily News |

State media correspondent and failed politician Geoff Nyarota, has been very busy over the past few weeks launching wave after wave of unprovoked attacks on the country’s private media in general, and on the Daily News in particular.

Readers who may be familiar with the fact that Nyarota was the founding editor of the Daily News will have found it curious that I referred to him as a State media correspondent in my introduction, rather than a former newsroom head of this publication.

Well, the reason for this is quite simple really. At the time of our re-launch in March 2011 — after nearly eight years of our forced and unjust closure by President Robert Mugabe’s government — Nyarota took umbrage to the fact that my predecessor stated this seemingly innocuous fact in the re-launch edition.

Without boring readers to death with details of this inane issue, Nyarota also stated that he did not wish to be associated with the Daily News ever, as he thought that this would be tantamount to the newspaper riding on his larger-than-life (my words) name.

When he subsequently took us to the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) about this, we duly gave an undertaking that we were happy to make his name a swear word in our newsroom, as per his wish.

Except that that is not his wish.

When it suits him, he is very happy to parade himself as a former editor of this newspaper, and to tell all who care to listen to him, how successful he was as the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily News.

But mostly, when he talks about the newspaper it is to attack us for one thing or the other — including his supposed dismissal from the newspaper in 2010, even as he confusingly says he does not want to identify with us at the same time. And sometimes his rants are about our alleged lack of journalistic ethics and commercial success.

Incidentally, and I’m only putting this out there because he has invited this upon himself by writing about it in the State media, even as the courts are still adjudicating the matter:

The Labour Court recently threw out, with costs, his spurious claims that ANZ ever wanted to employ him beyond a temporary consultancy when it assisted him, at his express request, to come back from the US to Zimbabwe in 2010.

In tackling Nyarota, I’m well aware of the age-old adage that it is not a productive endeavour to try and out-piss a skunk — particularly one that is very bitter and outrageously malicious, as he is.

But at some point, enough does become enough, and Nyarota has made his bed and must now lie in it. Indeed, I’m very happy to tackle him tit for tat from now onwards, if that is what he wants.

Of course, I wish I didn’t have to pen this kind of opinion, as he should be basking in the glory of his achievements, and be remembered as fondly, by those who came after him, as the likes of Willie Musarurwa are.

Regrettably, he oftentimes allows his impulsive nature to repeatedly get the better of him, thereby getting into wholly unnecessary brawls with all manner of varying constituencies that have the net effect of eroding whatever journalistic standing that he may feel entitled to.

Nyarota, the danger is that at some point, as is beginning to happen now with worrying regularity, you overplay your hand and force otherwise decent people to come out and confront you in the public domain that you are abusing, to your detriment.

After all, lies have short legs, and frankly, Nyarota is the one with everything to lose in his skirmish with ANZ. I know this and he probably does as well, except that his big, but fragile ego won’t allow him to admit to this easily.

I will leave this discourse here, for now.

It is little wonder that a miffed colleague surmised last week that Nyarota may be suffering from narcissistic personality disorder — a very real illness where so-afflicted people are excessively pre-occupied with themselves, power, prestige and vanity, and therefore are unable to see the destructive damage that they are causing to themselves and others.

According to Wikipedia, people with narcissistic personality disorder are characterised by exaggerated feelings of self-importance; are pre-occupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power and brilliance; believe that they are “special” and unique; have an acute sense of entitlement; and demonstrate grandiosity in their beliefs and behaviour.

“Narcissists have such an elevated sense of self-worth that they value themselves as inherently better than others, when in reality they have a fragile self-esteem, cannot handle criticism, and often try to compensate for this inner fragility by belittling or disparaging others in an attempt to validate their own self-worth.

“Comments and criticisms about others are vicious from sufferers of NPD, in an attempt to boost their own poor self-esteem,” Wikipedia says.

While I’m certainly not qualified to validate other people’s mental well-being, it surely can’t harm Geoff if he sought help about whether he fits this profile — because NPD left unattended for too long can become very problematic.

Lest we forget! Nyarota’s big ego mistakenly fooled him into believing that he was so popular he could walk into the MDC and become their Member of Parliament for Makoni South during the 2013 elections.

But he was resoundingly rejected in primary elections where he garnered a paltry 44 votes against Pishai Muchauraya’s emphatic 447. I’m not sure whether he is still an MDC member or he is now concentrating on the hatchet jobs against the private media.

But some of us are aware of how he has become a propagandist against the private media and again this issue shall be dealt with in due course.

For the record, the success or otherwise of the Daily News has never been and will not be dependent on some perceived beneficial association with a Nyarota or a Gama.

Readers and advertisers of the newspaper, as is the case with other commercial publishing enterprises everywhere around the world, are the ones who determine its success. Nearly five years after our re-launch, we are still here and thriving to the utter pain of our detractors.

And a newspaper doesn’t require the archaic 60 percent to 40 percent advertising split that obtained in the dinosaur age to be successful, as you erroneously seem to believe. This is 2015 and media business models have changed.

And now to the issue of ethics, which has seen Nyarota labelling only the private media as unethical. This is bizarre coming from Nyarota, because history has it that he holds the record for the worst kind of unethical journalism, which I suggest should be a case study for all media students on HOW NOT TO WRITE A STORY.

Only a fool can believe Nyarota on ethics as he commissioned a fictitious story about a non-existent beheading of an MDC supporter in 2002.

The story reads like fiction but it was turned into a true story by Nyarota and what is particularly shocking is that the source of the story, who claimed that his wife was beheaded by Zanu PF thugs as her kids watched, was accommodated for two days in a hotel on the orders of Nyarota and was assigned a driver who would take him wherever he wished.

Nyarota believed the man’s account and did not bother to do the basics — of checking facts on the ground to establish if the man was telling the truth.

Part of the story read: “Two young girls, aged ten and 17, watched in horror as their mother was murdered brutally by having her head chopped off at the neck. Brandina Tadyanemhandu, 53, was butchered inside her hut in Magunje on Sunday by about 20 youths, who were suspected to be Zanu PF supporters.”

God have mercy, it was all lies.

Even a primary school aspiring journalist would have bothered to check facts first before publishing. And as it turned out, there was no such beheading — talk of ethics the Nyarota way.

And Nyarota was editor of the Chronicle in Bulawayo when the newspaper wrote a comment siding with the Fifth Brigade, which massacred more than 20 000 civilians in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.

What’s ethical about this mass murder, Mr Nyarota?