9. The Media: means to an end or medium for amplifying Trans, bi, homo phobia. One of the violations reported over the review period has been hate speech, which is the use of derogatory, demeaning or inflammatory language when making reference to LGBTI persons. Nowhere has this been more prominent than in the mainstream media, across both government owned and privately owned media. Activism by LGBTI persons in the country tended to generally attract media interest and attention with some issues covered being inflammatory stories about homosexuals and homosexuality, further exacerbating the isolation and in many cases the security of LGBTI persons. What is clear however is that while the media platforms in themselves may be neutral, editorial policy is sometimes the deciding factor in how stories are preferred, angled and covered by the media houses. One trend that has been observed is that government owned media has tended to report more negatively about issues relating LGBTI persons compared to the privately owned media, which seemed to be more tolerant and objective in their reportage. Of all the media stories recorded by GALZ from the mainstream media, Government owned media accounts for very little by way of positive coverage of LGBTI issues. In the period under review 2012-2017 GALZ monitored the media for coverage of LGBTI related issues. Through the five-year period 95 articles were documented from both the privately owned and government owned media. While the monitoring was not exhaustive, it gives give a good impression of the nature and extent of coverage of LGBTI issues. It is well worth noting that the private media provided a space for GALZ to publish numerous statements, positions and responses to public discourse of interest to the LGBTI community and population at large. During the 2012-13 period GALZ issued 26 press statements and alerts, either commenting on public issues or commemorating important calendar dates of interest to LGBTI persons. In 2014 GALZ published five statements, all in the private media mainly marking commemoration days such as Women’s Day, IDAHOT and Youth Day. An analysis of the state of human rights violations against LGBTI persons in Zimbabwe (2011-2017) 37