Basic Education, Sport and Culture Minister John Mutorwa said a section of the policy requires governments to "allocate adequate funding to existing news agencies' to share information among themselves."

He was responding to comments made by National Assembly members during the debate on the Southern African Development Community's (SADC) Protocol on Culture, Information and Sport.

Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Abraham Iyambo, had asked whether the section dealing with the availability of information meant that governments should give money to all news media in their countries.

Mutorwa said media in the region relied heavily on foreign news agencies whose information is largely "sensational news that deals with death, destruction, famine and corruption".

SADC governments had agreed to set up a Southern African News Pool for news agencies to share their stories.

"It is hoped that the creation of the SADC News Pool will help to counteract the dissemination of negative and sensational news and that eventually it will contribute towards reflecting a more objective and positive of Africa abroad," Mutorwa said.

The news sharing has already begun and the Mozambican news agency, AIM, is the temporary conduit for some government agencies in the region.

Mutorwa said "better financing by governments and a greater degree of editorial autonomy will allow individual news agencies to make meaningful contributions towards such a news agency pool, while it will at the same time be able to send stories written by African journalists to its clientele."

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