By Tendai Makaripe
Why ethical reporting on children in Zimbabwe matters
There are two kinds of sentences a child can receive.
One is handed down by a court, guided by law, evidence and procedure.
The other is handed down by strangers through headlines, screenshots and WhatsApp forwards, guided by outrage, gossip and clicks.
The second sentence is often harsher, and it has no end date.
It follows a child into school corridors, job interviews, church pews and neighbourhood streets.
It turns allegations, misunderstandings and youthful mistakes into a permanent identity.
That is why ethical reporting on children in Zimbabwe matters more than many newsrooms are willing to admit, because what we choose to publish about children can damage them in ways adult subjects can recover from.
In recent coverage of a Bulawayo case involving a 14-year-old accused in a matter relating to a toddler, some media houses and social media pages went beyond reporting and exposed a minor’s identity, interviewing her and her mother in ways that made the child recognisable.
The teen was even paraded and questioned on camera, using a mask as if that settled the ethics.
The “public domain” excuse does not protect a child
A few senior voices in the media industry defended this by saying the story was already “in the public domain”, so concealing identities would have been pointless.
Children’s Voices rejects that reasoning.
A leak does not cancel an ethical duty; it heightens it.
Harm multiplies with reach, repetition and permanence.
The job of a newsroom is not to authenticate a WhatsApp leak; it is to contain harm while telling the story the public needs.
When journalists repeat identifying details that are circulating online, they do not “report what is out there”.
They legitimise it, amplify it, and make the child’s exposure harder to undo.
The ethical standard is not whether others have already behaved badly.
The standard is whether you are about to make the harm bigger, longer and more permanent.
What Zimbabwean law says about exposing minors
Zimbabwean law is clearer than many editors admit.
The Constitution: best interests, privacy and fair trial
Section 81 (2) of the Zimbabwean Constitution defines a child as anyone under 18 and makes the child’s best interests “paramount in every matter concerning the child”.
It also guarantees privacy (s57) and fair-trial protections, including the presumption of innocence (s70).
Media freedom is protected, but it has an internal boundary: freedom of expression and of the media excludes “malicious or unwarranted breach of a person’s right to privacy” (s61(5)(d)).
When the subject is a child suspect, “unwarranted” is not a small word.
Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act: identity concealment
The Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act then addresses identity directly.
Section 195(1) prohibits publication—by broadcast, print, or any other method—of the name, address, school, place of occupation, or “any other information likely to reveal the identity” of a person under 18 who “is being or has been tried in any court” on a criminal charge, unless the presiding judge or magistrate consents in writing (or the Minister consents after trial) (Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act [Chapter 9:07], s195(1)).
Section 195(2) makes contravention a criminal offence with penalties (s195(2)).
That is not a “nice-to-have” guideline; it is a legal guardrail.
Children’s Act and Publicity Restriction Act: closed protection, not public spectacle
Inside children’s courts, the Children’s Act reinforces the same protective logic: it bars publication of identifying details of a child concerned in children’s court proceedings unless the presiding officer issues a written order dispensing with the prohibition (Children’s Act [Chapter 5:06], s5(5)), and it restricts who may even be present at a sitting of a children’s court (s5(6)).
The Courts and Adjudicating Authorities (Publicity Restriction) Act goes further by empowering courts to restrict public disclosure of proceedings and identities, explicitly recognising welfare grounds for those under 18 (Courts and Adjudicating Authorities (Publicity Restriction) Act [Chapter 7:04], s3(1)(b) read with s3(2)).
In plain English: Zimbabwe’s legal framework does not treat child identity as entertainment.
It treats it as a protectable interest, sometimes backed by criminal sanction.
Are journalists allowed to publicly interview a minor suspect?
So, are journalists allowed to interview a minor suspect publicly?
The law does not provide a neat one-line ban that says, “A journalist may never interview a child suspect.”
But that absence is not permission to harm.
A child in conflict with the law is not a spokesperson, and a suspect is not a performer.
Interviewing a 14-year-old about an allegation, in front of multiple journalists, risks turning a child’s words into public “confessions” or permanent labels, regardless of whether the child understands their rights, the consequences, or the media’s power.
It also risks contaminating the justice process and undermining the constitutional commitment to fair trial and best interests (Constitution of Zimbabwe, 2013, ss. 70 and 81(2)).
There is also a basic power imbalance that ethical journalism cannot ignore: an accused child is under stress, facing authority figures, and vulnerable to pressure—direct or indirect.
A crowded press setting increases the likelihood of intimidation, manipulation, or performative “answers” designed to satisfy adults, not truth.
Is masking the face enough? Not always
The “mask” defence collapses under basic child-protection logic.
A child does not become anonymous because a face is covered.
Communities recognise uniforms, voices, parents, neighbourhoods and the “jigsaw” formed by combining small details.
UNICEF’s guidance warns that children can be put at risk even when identities are changed or obscured, and that the child’s best interests must be the first consideration in reporting.
International juvenile justice standards are blunt.
According to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (Beijing Rules), Rules 8.1–8.2, juveniles have a right to privacy “at all stages”, and “in principle, no information that may lead to the identification of a juvenile offender shall be published” .
Article 10 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child prohibits unlawful interference with privacy and attacks on honour and reputation, as does Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
A child’s future is not collateral damage for today’s clicks.
Why parading a child before cameras is ethically dangerous
There is another uncomfortable question this Bulawayo case raises: the parading of a child suspect before cameras.
Zimbabwean criminal procedure recognises that children require special handling even at the custody stage.
Section 135 allows officials, for most offences, to release an accused under 18 without bail (or release them to a responsible adult, or place them in a place of safety) (Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act [Chapter 9:07], s135(1)).
That approach is consistent with the Constitution’s section 81 (2) best-interests standard.
Publicly staging a child suspect for a media scrum moves in the opposite direction.
It multiplies exposure, increases pressure, invites vigilante judgment, and risks making rehabilitation impossible.
It also normalises a harmful culture: that children are fair game for public humiliation if a case is sensational enough.
Report the event without reporting the child
This is the line our profession must hold: report the event without reporting the child.
Journalists can inform the public about what happened, what the police allege, what the law says, what safeguards exist for children and for victims, and what communities can do to protect toddlers, without naming the child, identifying her school, naming her mother in a way that points back to the child, or publishing images and audio that make recognition inevitable.
That is not “hiding crime”.
It refuses to outsource punishment to a crowd.
The standard Zimbabwean media must adopt now
Ethical, child-sensitive reporting rests on four non-negotiables.
First, apply the best-interests test every time: if identifying the child is not strictly necessary for a compelling public interest, do not do it.
Second, avoid identification by any route, not only faces.
Names, schools, addresses, parents, voice clips, uniforms and recognisable backgrounds can all be identified.
Third, treat “already trending” as a red flag, not a license.
When harm is circulating, responsible journalism reduces harm; it does not amplify it.
Fourth, question power rather than partnering with it.
If authorities parade a child suspect, the ethical newsroom refuses to participate and reports on the propriety of the practice without making the child identifiable.
If Zimbabwe’s media wants to rebuild trust, it must stop treating child identity as content.
This Bulawayo case should become a turning point: remove identifying material where possible; issue clear corrections; train reporters in jigsaw identification; and enforce newsroom policies aligned to the Constitution and the criminal-procedure protections already in black-and-white law.
A court sentence, if it comes, will be based on evidence and procedure.
The media sentence, our sentence, should be based on constitutional duty, child-rights standards, and the simple truth that children deserve protection even when society is angry.
