Practices of Journalistic Ethics in the Newsroom: Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation ETV News Channel in Focus:
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Date
2021-06
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አዲስ አበባ ዩኒቨርስቲ
Abstract
The media have the responsibility of serving the people by providing fair, balanced and
accurate stories in a responsible manner. The purpose of Journalism is to help the public by
feeding truth information for better life. EBC is state media, have also double responsibility
as a bridge between society and government as well as main tool for national consensus. But
rises complain on practice of journalistic ethics. The profession violated and affected by
many factors. The purpose of this study is to explore the practice of journalism ethics in the
newsroom focusing on Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC). Quantitative and
qualitative research approach was employed for the study; survey questionnaire and indepth
interview were used as specific methods for gathering the data. A total sample of 126
journalists was randomly selected to fill the survey questionnaire and 10 media professionals
like media managers, chief editor, editors, producers and reporters were purposefully
selected for the in-depth interview to support the findings from the questionnaire. As a result,
Journalists, while producing news stories the major respondents have explain that;
objectivity, social responsibility, conflicts of interest, were affected for fair and balanced
report in different ways. In this particular research topic the researchers also able to find
many details for internal and external factors of journalists that influence ethical journalism
profession in the newsroom. Some of them are political factor, financial dependence, selfcensorship,
personal biases, organizational agenda, small group influence, psychological
factors, subjective judgments and others. Therefore, based on the findings, it is recommended
that, the media should independent (politically and economically), media managers stand for
professional journalistic ethics, train journalists to build confidence, create journalists
responsible and loyalist to profession. Ethical journalism needs attention from media houses
leaders and government as well as policy makers.
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Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation ETV news channel in Focus