Orientations of Peace Journalism in Selected Ethiopian Newspapers
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Date
2014-11
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The stud y aims to investigate orientations of peace journalism in se lected newspapers in
Ethiopia: Addis Ze men, Reporter (Amharic) and Addis Admass in 2012. Since th e
emerge nce of press in E thiopia, media outlets mo stl y serve as a battle field for power
elites. The study tries to examine how med ia address peace/conflict in te rm s of their
content ori entation and their practitioners ' view towards peace journalism. Th e stud y
emp lo ys Galtung's (1968) peace journ ali sm assumption, w hi ch says that if med ia played
a role in promoting war and spre ading violence why would it not contribute to en d
vio lenc e and build peace, as it s theoretical framework. It uses both quantitative and
qualitative methods. Using multi-sta ge sampling technique 160 conflict/peace related
news storie s and ed itorial articl es were found from 66 newspaper issues randomly
selected from the three newspapers. The technique used to analyze the stories is content
analysis . On the other sid e, in-depth interview was held with 14 purpose ly selected
informants. Results of the study reveal that print medi a outlets in Ethi opia pa y little
attention to peace oriented issues both in their outputs' (contents') orientation and th e ir
practitioners' attitud e toward s peace journalism. Analyzed contents remain more of war
oriented, with confl ict affi li ated reporting approach (s tyle) and do minantl y conflict story
fram in g. Most stories investigated are wa r, prop agand a and elite oriented with zero -sum
outcomes. The y also concern on single events (incidcnts) havin g visible effects caused by
differences amo ng conflicting parties, in a ve ry reactive and partisan manner. In line with
this most stories use vilifying language sometimes co ined by few power elites in their
reports. Besides, most media practitioners in Ethiopia lack cle ar understanding an d
enou gh awarene ss on peace journali sm bas ic concepts. In general the ne wspapers do not
look at a departure from the trad ition al (war orie nted) way of covering news stori es. It is
concluded that medi a houses themselves have limited conunitment as we ll as intell ec tu al
capac ity to develop peace oriente d press.
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Keywords
Peace Journalism, Selected Ethiopian Newspapers