The interplay between press freedom, professionalism and proprietorship in Zimbabwe is thefocus of this paper. Zimbabwean news media are increasingly becoming an antidemocratic forceowing to the political, economic and professional problems that are continuously bedevilling theprofession of journalism in the country. Public and private media owners have created ‘regimes’that undermine professional and ethical roles of journalists. What is even more troubling is thatthe country’s journalists have resigned to these developments, seeing them as ‘normal’, andfinding it natural that they have to adjust their professional roles to suit the new environment.Whilst the journalist cannot take all the blame, the state and media proprietors are publiclymandated to promote and uphold the highest standards of professional journalism. This meansthat levels of remuneration and benefits must not be used to defeat professional journalism andethics. However, my findings importantly also showed that far from being docile victims of thehostile media environment obtaining in the country, most Zimbabwean journalists have‘resisted’, ‘rebelled’ and are developing sophisticated ways of negotiating the pressures exerted onthem by private and public media proprietors. My argument is that free and open media practicesare important for democratic processes to fully take root in Zimbabwe.