The Practice of development Journalism in the Ethiopian media landscape
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Date
2017-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This research attempted to study the practice of development journalism in Ethiopian media landscape, through comparing the development issue coverage and challenges of government and private owned media. It was informed by public serving development journalism and social responsibility theory of theoretical frameworks. Its focus was on a practical nature of development news coverage and challenges in Ethiopian media. The research emphasizes on the ownership, actors, nature, sector, aim, source and trend of development issue coverage and the challenges of the coverage. A Content analysis and in-depth interview was conducted on the news carried by the four selected media to explain the extent and explore the challenges of coverage of development issues respectively. The analysis shows that both the government and privately owned media in Ethiopia had their own kind of problems in their practice of development journalism: The government media, Focuses on the government development actor’s success only. They are not applying critical journalism. To the worst, the government media are not considering the development contribution of non state actors . The government media are event oriented They luck professional integrity for the public interest by ensuring transparency and accountability by exposing corruption and investigating crimes that hinder the national development process through ethically participation in the development activity in a process oriented manner and are not finding solutions for development problems through participating the grass root. Structural censorship, Self censorship of journalists, unethical conduct of journalists, professional limitations, law commitment of media leaders to enforce the policy, lower level of Public culture of information exchange, trespassing of editorial policy and government official’s perception of DJ as a development success only reporting are challenging the practice. In contrast, privately owned media in Ethiopia covered less development issues than the government media, gives very little time and space for the development issues of Ethiopia
compared to the government media. But, in that little amount of coverage, they focus on government development actors failure and dissimulate non-state actors failure. Paradoxically, the private media in Ethiopia similar to government media are not applying investigative journalism and watchdog the public property. They have no role in exposing corruptions and crimes committed on public properties. Practically, they are also event oriented and Addis Ababa based one side story tellers more than the government media. Resource limitation (human, Material and financial), wrong perception of government PR officers and officials towards private media and prohibition of information, government tax and null incentive for private media, lower level of public culture for information exchange and freedom of expression are the top line challenges which affected their coverage of development issues of the private media
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Ethiopian media landscape