ABSTRACT

Although the Ethiopian government has often claimed that state media follow development journalism (DJ) as their reporting style, broadcasting frequencies have been aggressively grabbed by public relations (PR) departments of government offices. The purpose of this research is to explore the type of journalism that has been implemented in the Ethiopian state media. The research follows a qualitative approach to conduct in-depth interviews and to do a document analysis. Apposite documents were gathered from Ethiopian Broadcast Corporation (owned by the federal government) and four regional state mass media houses. The researcher interviewed several media managers and journalists from the state media houses. The findings of the research show that PR practitioners are increasingly working as agenda-setters and gatekeepers while they deter investigative reporting, constructive criticism and ethical practices of the profession. The paper concludes that the PR-driven model of journalism is what the Ethiopian state media are practising. This paper also identifies the major features of the PR-driven journalism model. The research concludes that state media are often idealistic to implement DJ and suggests that community media needs to be considered for the implementation of DJ model of reporting.

摘要

尽管埃塞俄比亚政府经常声称官方媒体遵循发展新闻（DJ）作为其报道方式，但广播频率已被政府机构的公共关系（PR）部门抢占。这项研究的目的是探讨在埃塞俄比亚官方媒体中已实施的新闻类型。该研究遵循定性方法进行深入访谈并进行文档分析。从埃塞俄比亚广播公司（由联邦政府拥有）和四个地区州大众媒体收集了适当的文件。研究员采访了州媒体的几位媒体经理和记者。研究结果表明，公关从业人员在阻止调查报告，建设性批评和职业道德实践的同时，越来越多地充当议程制定者和看门人的角色。文章得出的结论是，埃塞俄比亚官方媒体正在采用PR驱动的新闻业模式。本文还确定了PR驱动的新闻模型的主要特征。该研究得出的结论是，国有媒体通常是实施DJ的理想选择，并建议在实施DJ报告模型时需要考虑社区媒体。