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Taking on the journalists

President Rupiah Banda and his Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) are struggling to control the mass media before next year’s general elections. The private media, especially the popular newspaper The Post, are thriving, riding high on the declining fortunes of publicly owned media, whose credibility has suffered severely in recent times. The Post, an ardent and fiery critic of Banda, who has never concealed his contempt for the paper, currently sells 55-65,000 copies daily, while the state-owned and government-controlled Times of Zambia and Zambia Daily Mail have a daily circulation of 8,000 and 7,000 respectively. Radio and television stations are also proliferating and causing headaches for the government....

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Taking on the journalists

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