Public Trust in the Ethiopian Mainstream Media: Addis Ababa’s Public in Focus
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2013-12
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
It is argued that trust in media is a necessary condition for trust in other political and
social institutions. Hence, this study attempted to assess Addis Ababa’s public level of
trust in the Ethiopian mainstream media; analyze why the public either trust or mistrust
the mainstream media; and identify which media—the private or the government in
general —garners trust more and why. To this end, A Multiple Factor Model of Trust in
News Media was employed as a theoretical framework.
A triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methodology was used to conduct this
research, while quota sampling and accidental sampling which are non-probability
sampling methods were employed to select samples. To gather the necessary data the
research employed questionnaire. Questionnaires were administered for 400 (300 of
them were selected for the study) selected participants.
The result of the study revealed that only insignificant number of the sample (3.3%)
population has a “lot of trust” while 44.3 percent said they have “some trust.” This
shows that the majority (50.7%) of the respondents either don’t have trust that much or
they never have trust in the country’s mainstream media institutions. The reasons
respondents mentioned for not having a trust in the media include: the media focus on
issues which are not relevant to the public; the media are either sided with the
government or opposition political parties; the media do not report issues truthfully;
and the media lack journalistic professionalism.
The private media were chosen as more trusted than the government owned media by
majority (74.5%) of the respondents while 20.1 percent of the participants of the study
trusted the government media more. Most of the respondents mentioned that they trust the
private media not because of its (own) qualities but because they don’t trust the
government media. The research has also found out that Sheger FM is the most trusted
media institution for the majority of the respondents while ETV is the least trusted.
Description
Keywords
Ethiopian Mainstream Media