SECTOR 2 2.8 All media fairly represent the voices of society and its minorities in its ethnic, linguistic, religious diversity. The fair representation of the society’s voices, including minorities, is inconsistent. Around election time, several media houses crop up to communicate particular agendas. It is at these times that “vernacular languages see a re-emergence in the media”. Zambia has seven major languages, and 73 local dialects. Bemba and Nyanja, as the bigger language groups, enjoy broader coverage. The Moon newspaper, published fortnightly, carries content in some vernacular languages, but the publication is not widely distributed. Smaller tribal languages are further under-represented, including on community radio. For example on Mazabuka and Radio Lyambai in Mongu community radios, they didn’t want small tribal languages used. “We have minority languages and minority languages.” On television media, there is limited programming in local languages, and there is a hope that with digital migration there may be increased airtime for this, through switching to provincial centres. In terms of religious diversity, the larger percentage of religious content is based on Christianity, and then on Islam. Representation of other religions is rare. The Catholic radio stations do not discriminate on content from other denominations. The stations “discuss any religion, and do not attack any religion”. In fact, this is done to the extent that at Radio Musi-O-Tunya, the main churches felt that they were being marginalised with regards to coverage. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities are also underrepresented in the Zambian media, probably because homosexuality is criminalised in Zambia. “It is a criminal offence to be engaged in sexual conduct with someone of the same sex, so how do you cover this without causing victimisation of the source?” It was also noted that where coverage on LGBT individuals or communities takes place, this is done in a derogatory way. “When you talk about homosexuality, in our case in Zambia, it is not something that has been accepted. Socially they are not accepted.” In August 2013, “ZNBC showed a movie where two gay people kissed. For the next two days, they were apologising for screening this. It is not tolerated.” AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER ZAMBIA 2013 39