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.”