Browsing by Author "Dawit Amogne"

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    Ideals vs Praxis: Examining the Tensions between Journalistic Role Conceptions and Performance in the Ethiopian Public Media Landscape
    (Addis Ababa University, 2025-05-01) Dawit Amogne; Abdisa Zerai
    Journalism has long been practiced throughout the Ethiopian media history. However, journalists' roles, as reflected in their outputs, have remained contentious. This study has attempted to examine the journalistic role conception and practice among the Ethiopian public media journalists. Using the theoretical lenses from the JRP Framework and Gatekeeping Theory, the study collected data from participants (N = 90) who worked for the public media organizations based in Addis Ababa. The survey questionnaire – for conception and perceived enactment - was administered through Google Forms, hard copy, and Word document versions of the questionnaire. It also gathered data from news stories (N = 82) whose contents were analyzed for evidence of enacted journalism practices. The results have shown that the role conception-performance gap was found to be statistically significant for watchdog, civic, and service roles. The watchdog role received a higher degree of importance, but it was observed that watchdog was almost absent. Conversely, the loyal-facilitator role was the most dominant role of the public media house, where journalists‟ main duty is to promote the government agenda and patriotic reporting in agreement with the state‟s priorities and national interests. The study also observed a dearth of journalistic autonomy, especially when it comes to making decisions on the final outputs of the newsroom productions. The findings highlight the meddling factors – political and institutional – played key roles in journalistic role performance. The study concludes with recommendations for future research and policy reform.