Journalists from Zambia’s state, private, community and online media houses pledged to uphold the highest ethical standards in their coverage of the country’s General Elections scheduled for 13 August 2026.
They further committed to accuracy, fairness and professionalism in their reportage of the elections.
The journalists made the commitment by signing the Zambian General Election Media Code of Conduct Pledge 2026 on the last day of the Media & Elections Capacity Building Workshop, held 14-16 July 2026 at the Mulungushi International Conference Centre in Lusaka, Zambia.
The workshop was a collaborative effort by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UNESCO Regional Office of Southern Africa (ROSA), the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), United Nations Zambia and MISA Zambia.
Before signing the pledge, MISA Regional Director, Dr Tabani Moyo, facilitated the process and shared experiences with the participants from a regional perspective.
Dr Moyo walked the participants through the now accepted regional footprint on election coverage that MISA has rolled out in three other countries.
“We first tried this in Lesotho in 2022, almost as an experiment,” Dr Moyo told the journalists.
“Nobody was entirely sure it would hold. But when we took the same idea to Zimbabwe in 2023, and then to Malawi last year, we started to see a pattern: that newsrooms that publicly commit to a pledge before their own stakeholders, tend to hold themselves to it.”
He said the journalists were now an integral part of a region that has seen the results of signing the pledge to uphold the ethics of the profession.
Dr Moyo said this has seen drastic reductions in attacks on journalists in the three other countries where the pledge was signed.
The pledge was accordingly signed by the strategic stakeholders critical to the competitive election process, from inception to its conclusion. The stakeholders included editors, journalists, electoral management body, police, civil society organisations, media regulatory bodies and media owners.
“…By taking this pledge, we commit to being accountable to the Zambian public and to upholding the highest standards of impartiality and integrity in compliance with the Code of Conduct. ‘Accordingly, we invite stakeholders to sign the pledge as a commitment to support journalists in performing their constitutionally guaranteed duties…” reads the pledge.
MISA, in line with the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, is highly committed to a multi-stakeholder approach to ensure the media remains at the centre of disseminating information that empowers citizens to make informed decisions, especially during national processes such as elections.
MISA Regional Communique
