Conflicting professional obligations among government journalists in Ethiopia
This paper is an investigation into journalism cultures in three large media organizations in Ethiopia, all state-owned: Ethiopian Television, Ethiopian News Agency and The Ethiopian Herald. Through a series of in-depth interviews the researcher set forth to analyse how journalists cope with the possible conflict between being a professional journalist and working for a governmental media institution. The research suggests that even if the conflict is highly evident among the journalists, they tend to adopt pragmatic strategies to even out professional contradictions. Most journalists were found to negate any political affiliation and demonstrated identification with a wider journalistic community. One of the foremost strategies to reconcile the professional conflict was found to be self-censorship; however, the motivation for applying self-censorship is complex. The study suggests social control of the newsroom as one theoretical explanation.
Publisert i Paper presented at the annual IAMCR congress, Stockholm, Sweden, 2008
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