Commentator slams Malawi media for simply repeating State House statements

A prominent Malawian journalist and commentator has launched a blistering attack on Zodiak Broadcasting Station, accusing the outlet of failing basic journalistic standards in its coverage of President Peter Mutharika’s frequent trips abroad.

Idriss Ali Nasser took to Facebook to deliver a scathing rebuke to the broadcaster, invoking a fundamental principle of journalism to make his point.

‘If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both,’ he wrote. ‘It’s your job to look out the window and find out which is true.’

Nasser argued that Malawian newsrooms had grown complacent, simply relaying official statements from State House rather than independently verifying the facts behind them – a criticism that comes amid growing public unease over President Mutharika’s repeated undisclosed trips to South Africa, the fourth of which took place just this week.

He suggested reporters should be doing far more legwork, including sending journalists to the airport to physically witness the president’s departure or speak to eyewitnesses on the ground.

Among the questions Nasser said should be answered: did the 86-year-old president walk up the aircraft steps unassisted, or did an aide have to help him? Did he fly out on a scheduled Malawi Airlines flight to Johannesburg, or – as has become a recurring pattern – board another unexplained private jet? And crucially, who else was present at the airport to see him off?

Nasser was particularly critical of the tendency among broadcasters to simply reproduce statements issued by the Office of the President and Cabinet, currently headed by Dr Justin  Saidi, rather than independently interrogating their contents.

‘Give us – your customers – more than a regurgitation of what is in the official press statement,’ he wrote, adding pointedly that journalists are ‘neither an extension of Dr Saidi’s office, nor his megaphone.’

The intervention comes at a sensitive moment for both the government and the country’s media. Just days earlier, State House issued its own broadside against ZBS and Luntha TV, accusing the broadcasters of spreading false information and demanding the media regulator, MACRA, take disciplinary action against them.

That row centred on a ZBS report that had falsely claimed the president had left the country – an error officials seized on as evidence of irresponsible journalism, even as critics like Nasser argue the deeper problem lies not in over-reporting the president’s movements, but in the media’s failure to scrutinise them properly in the first place.

Nasser’s comments have struck a chord with many Malawians online, amplifying calls for greater transparency over the president’s travel – and renewing debate over where the line falls between government accountability and media overreach in a country grappling with both.