Ethnic Orientation over Ethical Underpinnings: Emerging Trends of the Ethiopian Media Landscape

ABSTRACT

The study aims to assess the interplay between ethnic identity politics and editorial independence of the six purposively selected ethnic-based Ethiopian media through the context of conflict reporting. In so doing, a total of 188 conflict news stories were collected from the selected television outlets and subjected to quantitative content analysis. Descriptive statistics of percentage and a non-parametric test of Chi-square were computed to see the extent and distributions of different variables across categories, and interpretations were mainly made in light of the constructs of social identity theory and hierarchy of influences model. Journalism of activism has become an emerging trend so that the ethnic orientation seems to overwhelm the ethical underpinnings. Ethnically affiliated polarization and political parallelism seem to prevail in the media landscape. Journalists’ professional identity appears to be compromised at the expense of ethnic solidarity. This was intensified by prominence by placement, bias by omission and source selection bias, in-group favoritism and out-group derogation, strategic alliance to other groups and out lauding exclusive victimization in reporting conflicts.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnicity
• ethnic media
• ethical orientation
• Ethiopian media
• journalism
• activism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 EPRDF constitutes the four ethnic oriented parties; namely Tigray People Liberation Front(TPLF),Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM) (later changed in to Amhara Democratic Party(ADP),Oromo People Democratic Organization(OPDO) later rebrand it to Oromo Democratic Party (ODP) and South People Democratic Movement(SPDM).

2 https://cpj.org/2019/04/ethiopia-abiy-ahmed-press-freedom-reform/.

3 The term “reform” is subjected to the period that Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed took power and now onwards.

4 https://ethio.news/2019/12/30/crisis-group-listed-ethiopia-among-10-conflicts-to-watch-in-2020/.

5 https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/ethiopia.

6 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/02/killed-ethiopia-massacre-amnesty-oromia-amhara; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/world/africa/ethiopia-school-massacre.html; ethiopoint.com/the-non-oromos-and-christian-were-targeted-and-massacred-in-oromia-region/.

7 Jawar Mohammed is a an Oromo political activist and a founder of OMN who played a great role in the Oromo protest movement in 2015. Now, he is in prison following the assassination a renowned Oromo singer, Hachalu Hundesa suspected for incitement.

8 Qemant are a small ethnic group in Northwestern Ethiopia.