The Role of EBC’s Political News Coverage in Bringing Consensus Among Society and Audience Attitude Towards it: AAU School of Journalism and Communications as Case Study
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2015-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to examine the role of Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation’s political news coverage in bringing consensus among citizens and political parties. It’s intended to examine how EBC’s television department covers political news and its role in bringing a sense of national unity among ethnic groups, particularly in higher educational institution of the country. It is obvious that the media, particularly public media have a responsibility to provide sufficient information of current events to raising awareness of various issues in society. However, as researcher’s observation, EBC has deficiency in this regard. There is no effective way of open forum for debate and discussion through television on political issues. Due to lack of awareness on current political issues some problems occurs among society, especially in some Universities. Thus, the main objective of this study is to examine EBC’s political news coverage in bringing consensus among citizens. It also aimed to understand whether or not EBC’s political news coverage is fair, balanced and accurate. To fulfill this aim, it’s emphasized on audience attitude towards EBC’s political news coverage by taking AAU under graduate division students of journalism and communications as sample of the study. Accordingly, out of the total population of 106 broadcast division students 25 were randomly selected and provided questionnaires.
The finding of the study revealed that EBC’s political news coverage has so many deficiencies. As respondents point of view, it doesn’t really involve public opinion, doesn’t provide open forum for debate and discussion, and there is also limitation in presenting fair, accurate and balanced political news. As a result of this, it couldn’t fulfill its audience interest and most of the audience have bad attitude towards EBC’s political news coverage.
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The Role of Ebc’s Political News Coverage