Analysis of Health News Reporting by Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation
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Date
2017-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The aim of this study is to examine the content of EBC’s Amharic television health news in terms
of the journalistic ethical standards and audiences’ gratification. The study used mixed method as
a research approach. Data were collected from media content and in-depth interviews. The content
of 75 news stories were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. For the audience gratification
part, data from 15 in-depth interviews with audiences from Addis Ababa were also interpreted
qualitatively. The qualitative data was analyzed thematically and frequency distribution method
was used to analyze the quantitative data. In order to give the study focus, four elements of media
ethics: clarity, impartiality, accuracy and decency were used as frames of analysis of the media
content. The study used uses and gratification as a guiding theoretical framework of the study.
The findings show that from the four ethical standards of journalism, lack of clarity was the major
problem observed in the sample health news. This was manifested by the use of medical jargons,
incomplete information and complexity of contents observed in the analyzed sample health news
stories. Sample audiences largely reported dissatisfaction with the EBC Amharic televisions health
news report. The findings also showed that, lack of clarity is the major reason for audiences’
dissatisfaction. Audiences also raised lack of accuracy, impartiality and decency as factors for their
dissatisfactions with the health news. Thus this study concluded that the major factor for the sample
audience dissatisfactions with the EBC health news report is the lack of clarity in the content of
the news. The study also concluded that the sample EBC health news lacks to meet the ethics of
clarity, accuracy and impartiality in the health news.
Finally, the researcher has summarized the major findings of the study, and based on the findings,
forwarded recommendations that might be useful to EBC as the station attempts to present health
stories that can meet ethical standards and create a better understanding and gratification for its
audiences.
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Keywords
Health News Reporting