In his quest to retain the presidency he has held since 1980, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has set the human rights bar pretty low with the violent treatment of real and suspected opposition supporters.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that Mugabe’s state controlled media has been contributing in its own way to the “poisonous atmosphere” in the country, as U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee said June 19.

The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) routinely broadcast and published the Mugabe regime’s propaganda in advance of a scheduled June 27 presidential runoff vote against Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), but it refused to accept paid advertising from the MDC. In the past few weeks, McGee said, the state media also has broadcast “inflammatory material” inciting violence against the opposition party.

Independent press freedom watchers in the region, such as the Media Institute of Southern Africa and the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, have voiced similar concerns.

According to Nation Media Group in Kenya, Zimbabweans rely heavily on the state media because there are no independent daily newspapers, television or radio stations. In fact, it says the MDC’s June 22 to withdraw from the race was completely blacked out. As of June 23, “the news was still filtering in courtesy of a few Zimbabweans with access to foreign media outlets.”

The country that scored highest in Freedom House’s 2007 survey of political rights and civil liberties and ranked fifth among 195 countries on its 2008 Press Freedom Report has given its intelligence services broad new surveillance powers.

Under a law approved June 19, Swedish authorities now can read all crossborder e-mails and faxes and listen in on overseas telephone conversations without first obtaining a court order. Supporters claim the measures are necessary to protect Sweden’s security from those who are using communications technology to plan attacks.

But the law faces strong opposition from civil liberties advocates and Sweden’s news media and blogging community. Agneta Lindblom Hulthén, who chairs the Swedish Union of Journalists, told Sweden’s The Local that privacy safeguards were under threat. As a journalist, Hulthén expressed specific concerns over being able to protect her sources and their rights to anonymity.

In a June 18 USA Today article, Arne Konig, president of the European Federation of Journalists, said, “The tapping of journalists’ telephones compromises the watchdog role of the media and puts at risk the right to inform the public.”

Challenges to the new law are sure to follow, but in the meantime, Swedish journalists are adapting to an age in which countries struggle to reconcile heightened security concerns with long-cherished freedoms.

Prospective voters might be relying less on journalists to track and interpret political developments and more on their own online research skills, at least in the United States.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported June 15 that nearly half the American adult population is using the Internet, text messaging or e-mail to get news on the 2008 presidential campaign or to inform fellow voters about the contest.

Of the 46 percent who told the survey teams they were using the Web for political activity, 39 percent said they have used it for “unfiltered” campaign materials such as videos of candidate debates, speeches and announcements, position papers and speech transcripts – all issued directly by the candidates.

At the same time, 60 percent agreed with the polling statement that the Internet is “full of misinformation and propaganda that too many voters believe is accurate.” Further, 48 percent say the news and information they get online is “just the same” as from other sources, with a slightly smaller number (47 percent) disagreeing.

Where am I going with all this? I’m taking it as further evidence that some of the public feels quite a bit of the campaign news they’re getting, whatever the source, has too much “spin,” and they increasingly are flocking to the Internet, where they have easy access to the primary sources, uncut and pundit-free.

This distrustful but self-reliant spirit might not boost the collective confidence of journalists, but if the trend continues, it does speak well to journalism’s goal of an informed citizenry. You can review the Pew survey results yourself on the organization’s Web site.

But if you’d still rather not do your own research on the 2008 campaign, see America.gov’s U.S. Elections.

The Washington Post newspaper is bolstering its identity as a web-based news source by training 185 staffers to use video cameras to complement their stories.

Chet Rhodes, assistant managing editor for news video at the washingtonpost.com said the goal is “to get everyone on board with video as a storytelling medium,” since he expects the impact of video to only grow larger, media blog beet.tv reports.

Rhodes, who formerly worked in broadcast journalism, said the web has more flexibility than television because there is no need to meet the evening news deadline or provide live shots. “We’re doing more to take people to a scene and introduce people to a character,” he said, and rather than focusing on the personalities of the news anchors, “the story is still the majority of what the videos are all about.”

The news video editor seems to be in sync with the advice of media consultant Paul Gillin, who told America.gov in February that journalists need to become multimedia reporters, with the capability to shoot video in the field to complement their stories.

Gillin has predicted the demise of most newspapers. But Ben Bradlee, the Post’s vice president at large, believes newspapers are here to stay. Television and the Internet may provide the same information, he told America.gov, but “the guy who gives” the information first “won’t always be the one who did it the best.”

In 2007 CNN began inviting its viewers to send in their reports for possible broadcast; the response was overwhelming. The network’s iReport.com Web site, launched February 2008, now makes every submission – more than 100,000 so far – available for view or comment.

Unless the material will be broadcast on CNN or CNN.com, the network completely absolves itself of responsibility for the online collection of “unedited, unfiltered news.” Basically, the network trusts its iReport.com audience to decide for itself what is accurate.

“Don’t kid yourselves. This content is not pre-vetted or pre-read by CNN. This is your platform. In some journalistic circles, this is considered disruptive, even controversial! But we know the news universe is changing. We know that even here, at CNN, we can’t be everywhere, all the time following all the stories you care about. So, we give you iReport.com. You will program it, you will police it; you will decide what’s important, what’s interesting, what’s news,” says the site moderator, adding her hope that the site will raise the bar on user-generated material beyond the “dancing monkeys and cute cats and dogs” found elsewhere.

However, the site does have its share of pet tricks, weddings and school reports, and observers may very well wonder what the real value is, and what separates iReport from, say, YouTube.

That’s why the “Need Help?” section on the lower left column is interesting. Its advice on what makes a good story or how to take a good photograph or video is very basic, not intimidating and seems perfect for a younger person who is just testing the journalism waters.

So there is a special value to iReport.com when you consider that amateur reporters, who are producing material to get it distributed on one of the world’s largest networks, are learning about and paying closer attention to journalism standards – thorough, accurate and original reporting – than they otherwise might have.

Have you submitted any “citizen journalism” reports? If so, why?