• Media Institute in Southern Africa – Zimbabwe Chapter (MISA) (Chairing)
• Zimbabwe Union of Journalists  (ZUJ)
• Federation of African Media Women (FAMWZ)
• Media Monitoring Project (MMPZ)
• Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust (ZIMCET)
• Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP)
• Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust (ZIMCET)
• Womens Trust
• ZimRights
• Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)

The overall goal of the taskforce is to gather and disseminate electoral information to all interested stakeholders. The taskforce also seeks to encourage the media in all its forms to become and act as a constructive and objective partner in strengthening the electoral process in Zimbabwe.  The taskforce seeks to address amongst others, the problems of partisan reporting, inequitable access to the media by the stakeholders such as political parties and lack of transparency and information dissemination to the electorate using all media channels.

Media and Information

The overall objective of this programme is to effectively gather, disseminate and communicate information about elections and other democratic processes in Zimbabwe.

Specific Objectives

The specific objectives of this programme are:

• To encourage fair and accurate media coverage of elections.
• To promote ZESN as a non-partisan, independent and professional organization in the field of elections.

Target Groups

Media practitioners, electorate, youth, students, policy makers, researchers, political parties, election management bodies, ZESN members and partners and the international community.

Activities

• To collect, store and disseminate information about elections and related issues (through statements, reports, alerts, op-eds, supplements, advertorials, monographs, books etc.).
• To provide capacity building for media practitioners, through workshops and meetings etc, to provide fair and accurate coverage of elections.
• To utilise the Resource Centre more actively and effectively.
• To produce and make more effective use of a Newsletter (Ballot News etc), annual reports; community newspapers, web-site, e-mail and alternative media).
• To specifically package information for media consumption.

Key Result Areas

Under the Plan, the following results will be sought:

• More people aware of ZESN’s work and positions on elections.
• Less self-censorship by journalists covering elections.
• Public showing more enthusiasm in election related issues.
• Better coverage of electoral issues by the media.
• Improved communication during election time.
• Electoral information in Zimbabwe well documented and easily available/accessible to interested stakeholders.
• Awareness of ZESN activities and electoral issues on wider scale.
• Positive interaction with the important stakeholders like the media, the electoral commission through sharing of information.