Despite several stakeholders expressing shock and pointing accusing fingers at the government as the ultimate culprit in the clamping down on press freedoms, IBA Director General Josephine Mapoma maintained that the action by the IBA had nothing to do with any government interference but enforcement of the law. She said the action is strictly on the conduct of the three broadcasting stations, which was allegedly not in conformity with the terms of their licences. Further to the closure of MUVI Television Station, police on 23rd August 2016 arrested and detained four MUVI TV employees for alleged criminal trespass in their closed premises. The four, John Nyendwa, Mubanga Katyeka, Musakanya and another had reported for work in the early hours when police picked them up on account that they illegally entered and accessed restricted premises. The four were detained at Lusaka Central Police. In terms of performance and conduct of the media, the levels of polarisation were at the worst going by the content carried by various media especially as it pertains to the coverage and reporting on the various political parties in the run-up to the general elections slated for August 2016 and immediately after. This is also according to empirical evidence in the MISA Zambia media monitoring report released after the elections7. According to the report, “…the PF was given undue coverage across all public media as nearly half of the coverage was dedicated to it. UPND received less than 30% of the coverage across all public media outlets with ZNBC TV1 and ZNBC Radio 2 allocating the least coverage to it.” Of note here was how ZNBC continued to come in for sharp criticism from several quarters, especially the opposition political parties, due to its overly favourable coverage of the ruling party in the news. Stakeholders questioned the role of the IBA if it could not reign in on open abuse of the airwaves by various broadcasters despite IBA having issued directives that the media should remain impartial as the country headed towards the elections. The IBA Board Chairman had earlier in the year appealed to radio and television stations to be impartial in their coverage of political parties before, during and after the August 11 general election. Such pronouncements, if accompanied by proactive actions to correct the situation are desirable, and could go a long way in remedying the current status of media polarisation. Therefore, IBA must seek to be given legislated powers to regulate ZNBC as one of the major players in the broadcast industry in order to level the 7 2016 MISA Zambia Media Monitoring Report phase 3-Campaign period 11