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Zimbabwe Online Content Creators (ZOCC) has applauded the High Court ruling which cleared journalist Hopewell Chin’ono of criminal charges alleged to have been committed while he was practicing journalism.
In her ruling, High court Judge Jester Hellena Charehwa quashed charges of communicating false information levelled against award-winning journalist Chin’ono.
Judge Charehwa cited that the law used by police to arrest him earlier this year no longer existed.
Commenting on the latest development in the media space, ZOCC chairman Toneo Rutsito said the news which came at a time journalists particularly local online content creators have been facing attacks is worthy celebrating.
“The judgement raised hope on judicial independence and more importantly denied the criminalisation of journalism,” he said.
“One can not be arrested for practicing journalism, whether or not Hopewell made a mistake in a simple trending tweet, criminalisation of that tweet is tantamount to absolute silencing of the media,” he added.
“This goes against the government agenda of freeing the media and more importantly, the recently freedom of information bill.”” Its a landmark ruling, Journalism is not a crime.”
Chin’ono spent over 20 days over the cooked up charges.
The cooked up charges emanated from a tweet he posted of a police officer alleged to have beaten up a mother who had her baby strapped on her back causing the death of the baby.
While the video had already gone viral across social media with such an insinuation before Hopewell made the tweet , the fact of the matter is that he was guilty of publishing information which was was not accurate.
This criminalised the act of journalism, where most journalists have made such errors, like in any other profession, the same error ought not to be criminalised.
The crime read like a violation of the Access to Information and Protection Act (AIPPA) which was repealed for its draconian ways.
However, the High Court has dropped the charges against Chin’ono stating that no such law exists , hence no law was broken.
His lawyer Harrison Nkomo said the charge fell under an “unconstitutional” law, noting the criminal code cited by prosecutors was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2014 for being “unfair”.
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