ABSTRACT

This article offers an analysis of newspaper coverage of education in the Eastern Cape. Using content analysis of news print media as a method of investigation, the findings illustrate a gap in education journalism in South Africa between 2005 and 2016. This study is an exploration of the education landscape in the Eastern Cape across two interrelated fields—social accountability and journalism. The aim is to understand the gaps in coverage in a key sector in the province, one that has continually been visible in the media, but which has also consistently failed to improve despite that visibility. The argument made herein is that for the media to be effective in holding duty bearers to account and fulfilling their role as “watchdogs” of society, what is required is a shift in the assumption that simply reporting on or highlighting corruption, maladministration or mismanagement of public resources is sufficient. Rather, the episodic reporting which is currently prevalent in education coverage keeps citizens information-poor and lacking the knowledge they require to actively hold public officials to account. The findings point to a failure by the printed press in fulfilling any accountability role and suggest that they are currently not contributing meaningfully to social accountability in the education sector in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province.

摘要

本文对东开普省的报纸教育报道进行了分析。通过使用新闻印刷媒体的内容分析作为一种调查方法，研究结果表明了2005年至2016年南非教育新闻领域的差距。这项研究是对东开普省两个社会相关领域和教育领域的教育前景的探索。新闻业。目的是了解该省关键行业的覆盖率差距，该行业在媒体上一直可见，但尽管能见度却始终未能改善。本文的论点是，要使媒体有效地使责任承担者承担责任并履行其作为社会“看门人”的角色，就需要改变假设，即仅仅报道或强调腐败，对公共资源的管理不善或管理不当就足够了。而是，目前在教育覆盖面中普遍存在的情景报告使公民信息贫乏，并且缺乏他们主动向公职人员追究责任所需的知识。调查结果表明，印刷机未能履行任何问责制，并表明它们目前对南非东开普省教育部门的社会责任制没有做出有意义的贡献。