From Plurality to Algorithm: A Regulator’s Journey Through the Noise

The Beginning

14 February, 2013, I was handed my first offer letter, a young registrar at a battered desk, flipping through applications that carried the fragile dreams of new publishers. Our mandate wasn’t an abstract mission statement. It was etched in the Constitution and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). My job, was clear: uphold freedom of the press; protect ethics in print, broadcast, and electronic media; ensure every Zimbabwean, from Harare to the furthest growth point, had equitable access to information; and guard the right to speak and be heard in every indigenous language. Freedom of expression is a simple phrase until you’re the one writing the letters that grant it.

Building Plurality in a Polarised Landscape

When I first began registering mass media services, Zimbabwe’s press space was as narrow as the dusty streets of some towns we visited. Before 2013, there were only a few licensed national media services. By 2016-17, that number had risen to a little above 60. On paper, this was a triumph: more voices, more choice, more room for truth to breathe. We believed, and I believed deeply, that more outlets would mean competing ideas, more robust debate, and less opportunity for any single publisher to set the national agenda.

In our outreach accreditation, we didn’t sit in Harare behind frosted glass. We took the services on the road: Mashonaland West, Midlands, Bulawayo, Matabeleland North and South, Masvingo, Manicaland. In those provincial halls, I explained to freelancers and small-town editors how to apply for accreditation, what codes of ethics looked like, how to protect their independence. But the ground told a different story. For all the new mastheads, many were short-lived, home offices posing as newsrooms, community newspapers that folded under the weight of licensing fees, or titles that repeated the same political slogans as the next.

The Paradox: When Plurality Doesn’t Mean Diversity

At one time, in Harare alone, we counted 74 media houses, but nearly half were dormant. In Kwekwe, where community papers bloomed on donor money, many couldn’t pay statutory levies or sustain advertising revenue. Vernacular papers struggled to compete with English publications. As the Legal Affairs and Procedures Committee, we sat in boardrooms balancing the ideals of plurality with the messy reality of biased reporting, retractions that came too late, and editors with political patrons whispering headlines into print.

When journalists came to us, some complaining about harassment, poor newsroom democracy, or fly-by freelancers tarnishing the profession, I realised regulation wasn’t just about registration. It was about protecting standards when the market itself wouldn’t. I signed letters to settle disputes over trademarked names, processed Supreme Court cases about broadcasting rights, and wrote to parties like the MDC-T when they alleged unfair treatment by the national broadcaster. Each letter was a reminder: the law can promise freedom, but the machinery to guard it is fragile.

Preparing for the Future: Regulating the Invisible

Over the years, the Commission drafted frameworks to test if applicants truly had the capacity to publish. We debated whether registration fees should differ for community newspapers versus commercial ones. We crafted COVID-19 preparedness plans to keep the fourth estate alive during a pandemic, online applications and tele-networking replacing face-to-face accreditation lines. We spoke of decentralized offices so rural journalists wouldn’t waste a week’s wage travelling for a press card. We imagined websites that could handle FAQs and cut down queues. Always, the principle was clear: regulation must evolve with reality.

But the more we adapted, the more we saw a deeper tension: plurality alone doesn’t guarantee truthful, diverse reporting. More outlets can mean more repetition, more manufactured outrage, more echo chambers. The same applies to today’s digital ecosystem, but on a scale we never imagined.

The Algorithm Enters: Where Do We Go From Here?

Today, I watch AI do what a struggling editor might dream of: generate a headline in seconds, rewrite press releases a thousand times over, spin stories from a prompt. The same paradox returns: the tools that promise more content don’t automatically deliver more truth. If one ‘fly-by journalist’ could damage the integrity of the profession, what happens when thousands of bots pump out convincing fakes before dawn? If our human regulatory systems already struggled to monitor 87 registered media houses and 1,300 journalists, how do we accredit the algorithm?

I remember the Afro Media case we handled: a single media house accused of broadcasting beyond its license, dragging us from magistrate’s court to the Supreme Court. That dispute was human-scale. Today’s infractions are data leaks and deepfakes, spreading across invisible networks.

Our stakeholder outreach taught me that real regulation is not just law, but trust: the rural journalist who travels many kilometers to get accredited, the community paper that translated national stories into the mother tongue. That’s what’s at stake when we talk about AI regulation, not just abstract risk, but the everyday person’s right to know and be known, in a language they understand, in a truth they can hold up to the light.

What's My Credo?

When people ask why my perspective matters, I point to my hands: the pages I signed, the complaints I read, the provinces I visited, the journalists I stood beside. Regulation must evolve from dusty filing rooms and constitutional amendments to algorithmic guardrails that protect the soul of the press. Because tomorrow’s press cards may not hang around necks. They may live in lines of code, feeding millions before breakfast.

Someone will still have to ask: Who wrote this? Who stands by it? Who is accountable? If we fail to answer, plurality will once again become noise, and the noise will drown out the truth we once set out to protect.