State media restructuring: Case study of Ethiopia
The large media institutions in Ethiopia are, like in most Sub-Saharan African countries, state-owned. This has been the tradition since the introduction of radio broadcasting on the African continent in the 1930s. In the case of Ethiopia, which was never colonized, the broadcasting agencies could be regarded personal assets of Emperor Haileselassie until his downfall in 1974. Similarly, the communist Derg regime (1974–91) continued to exert total control over the media, although in quite different manner than the previous empire rule. The print media too were totally controlled by the government as long as the Ethiopian empire and Derg dictatorship lasted. A new era in terms of media freedom was announced when EPRDF came to power in 1991, and rightly, newspapers and magazines flourished after the relatively liberal press law entered into force in 1992 (Proclamation no. 34/1992). The broadcasting media, however, remained a sole state property until the first two commercial radio licences were awarded in 2006. Today, the state broadcaster ERTA (Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency) principally dominates the airwaves, especially on the television side, while the situation is more diverse as regards the print media. There are four state-owned newspapers on the market (in Amharic, Oromiffa, Arabic and English) as well as some 58 private newspapers (MoI, 2008). The dominant picture, however, is one of state control of the mass media in Ethiopia. I have previously estimated that 1300 of 1700 practicing journalists in the country work in the state media (Skjerdal, 2008), and budget-wise, an even higher proportion of the funds is represented by the state media institutions since the equipment and infrastructure of a national broadcaster are more costly than those of small private newspapers and radio stations.
The focus in this paper is on the ongoing organizational restructuring of the state media in Ethiopia. My aim is both descriptive and analytic: I firstly want to document the changes that have taken place in recent years and indicate the direction for future restructuring and reform. Secondly, on a more critical note, I will consider the seemingly contradictory routes of recent restructuring in Ethiopia’s state media and discuss whether the reforms should be read as attempts of political control with journalistic production. The analysis is partly motivated by the alleged growing tendency that the Ethiopian government is showing to suppress free speech and civil liberties . The key argument in the paper is that current media reform in Ethiopia points in two directions at the same time: one of professionalization and one of protectionism.
The focus in this paper is on the ongoing organizational restructuring of the state media in Ethiopia. My aim is both descriptive and analytic: I firstly want to document the changes that have taken place in recent years and indicate the direction for future restructuring and reform. Secondly, on a more critical note, I will consider the seemingly contradictory routes of recent restructuring in Ethiopia’s state media and discuss whether the reforms should be read as attempts of political control with journalistic production. The analysis is partly motivated by the alleged growing tendency that the Ethiopian government is showing to suppress free speech and civil liberties . The key argument in the paper is that current media reform in Ethiopia points in two directions at the same time: one of professionalization and one of protectionism.
Publisert i Paper presented at PhD conference, Centre for Cultural Policy Research, Glasgow University, UK, 2009
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