"National in scope, this survey of Kenyan journalists conducted in 2012–2013 (n = 504) examines job autonomy in news selection decisions, media freedom and predictors of journalistic autonomy. The research also investigates the relationship between Kenya’s media freedom and journalistic autonomy
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. Findings show that over half (59%) of respondents believe that there is enough media freedom in Kenya. Similarly, there is a positive correlation between media freedom and journalistic autonomy—a relationship though moderate is statistically significant. While four in 10 Kenyan journalists have “some freedom” in deciding what to include in news, only 15.5 per cent enjoy “almost complete freedom,” and 31.7 per cent have “a great deal of freedom.” When analysed by demographics and work-related variables, male journalists reported higher autonomy than their female colleagues. Older and more experienced journalists have more freedoms than those who are younger and limited in work experience. Journalists with advanced education (doctorate and MA degree holders), those employed on full-time basis, and high monthly earners enjoy more job autonomy. Kenyan journalists working for international media organisations reported far higher autonomy than those in the local media. Job satisfaction and job autonomy emerged as the strongest predictors of journalistic autonomy in the Kenyan media." (Abstract)
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"We have noted profound transformations in the field of media freedom, which is making progress in certain areas, but losing ground in others. Media freedom is limited in particular by many legal restrictions on the right to impart information and ideas, although progress is being made with regard t
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o legal guarantees to seek and receive information. With regard to media pluralism, the last five years have seen a considerable increase in the number of sources of information. Yet the concentration of ownership of media companies and Internet services raises major concerns. The filtering effects of social media, which create “bubbles” in which people do not access the truth or “points of view” they consider “irritating” or “inappropriate” is one example. Another is the manipulation and dissemination of false information by propaganda mouthpieces. There has also been a hiatus in the progress of gender equality in content and staffing. Trends show that media independence is weakening and the professional standards of journalism are being eroded by economic forces on the one hand and lack of recognition by political actors on the other. Media and Internet companies are increasingly aware of the need for self-regulation. Finally, with regard to the physical, psychological and digital safety of journalists, trends remain extremely alarming, although implementation of the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity offers hope. There is new momentum for mechanisms to monitor, prevent, protect and strengthen justice for crimes against journalists." (Foreword, page 10-11)
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"A majority of Thai journalists viewed all roles listed in the questionnaire as very or extremely important. The roles that ranked highest included to report things as they are (88.7%), to provide analysis of current affairs (85.5%), and to be a detached observer (82.1%) (see Table 1). There was lit
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tle dispute about the relevance of all listed roles among the interviewed journalists as the relatively low standard deviations indicate, except for acting as an adversary of the government (s=1.01). The roles of providing information people need to make political decision, motivating people to participating in political activity, and monitoring and scrutinizing business were rated as extremely or very important by a slight majority." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"The Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) was established as Malawi's first national radio station when the country gained independence from Britain in 1964, partly with an ideological function of mobilising Malawians for the task of nation building. Since its inception, the broadcaster has been ac
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cused of serving the ideological interests of the ruling elite at the expense of the public good. Content-based evidence supporting this assertion has, however, been lacking. Against this background, a content study of one of MBC's leading television public affairs programmes, Speak Out, was conducted to interrogate a widely-held perception that the broadcaster's staffers interact with dominant ideology passively at the expense of promoting public good. The study was situated in debates between the dominant ideology thesis and the pluralist paradigm of news. Its results show that, contrary to the widely-held claim, the pursuit of the ideological project of nation building at the broadcaster generally conforms to the pluralist paradigm, especially Shoemaker and Vos's gatekeeper thesis which conceptualises journalists who actively engage with programme content as they mediate it. Presenters and producers of the programme use strategies which, to a considerable extent, connote their effort to pursue impartially politically sensitive aspects of the ideological project of nation building." (Abstract)
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"Egyptian journalists' most important role orientations are to be a detached observer, to report things as they are, to provide information people need to make political decisions, to let people express their views, to motivate people to participate in political activity, and to provide analysis for
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current affairs. As the reasonably low standard deviations indicates, there is little disagreement among journalists as to the importance of these roles. The least important journalistic roles among Egyptian journalists were to convey a positive image of political leadership (21.4%), support government policy (22.1%), and to provide entertainment and relaxation (35.2%). Still, a majority of journalists in Egypt found it important to influence public opinion, advocate for social change, monitor and scrutinize political leaders, and support national development. On the other hand, journalists were not as supportive of interventionist role orientations such as set the political agenda and providing advice, orientation and direction for daily life." (Journalistic roles, pages 1-2)
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"With regards to professional role orientations, Brazilian journalists found it most important to report things as they are, to promote tolerance and cultural diversity, to be a detached observer, to let people express their views, and to provide analysis of current affairs (see Table 1). These resu
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lts express the relevance of the “classic” roles of journalism as indicated by the quite low standard deviations. There was also a consensus among the respondents over the little importance of conveying a positive image of political leadership, being an adversary of the government, and supporting government policy. Most of Brazilian journalists supported politically assertive roles, like advocating for social change, providing information people need to make political decisions, monitoring and scrutinizing political leaders, and supporting national development. On the other hand, the interviewees consider less important to provide entertainment and relaxation, and to monitor and scrutinize business." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"With regards to professional role orientations, Chinese journalists found it most important to report things as they are, to provide analysis of current affairs, to support national development, to provide advice, orientation and direction for daily life, and to be a detached observer. The relevanc
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e of these “classic” roles such as “to report things as they are” and “to provide analysis of current affairs” was fairly undisputed among the interviewed journalists as the relatively low standard deviations indicate. Likewise, there was a strong consensus among the respondents over the importance of supporting national development. Still, a majority of journalists in China found it important to provide the kind of news that attracts the largest audience, to let people express their views, to influence public opinion, and to support government policy. The most disputative role is to be an adversary of the government (s=1.32), which is also the least supportive role. Another highly disputative role is to convey a positive image of political leadership (s=1.16). Except for the roles of supporting national development and supporting government policy, other politically more assertive roles were not widely supported, such as setting the political agenda, motivating people to participate in political activity, and monitoring and scrutinizing political leaders." (Journalistic roles, pages 1-2)
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"Alle großen Verlagshäuser der großen Leitmedien sind in Events involviert, bei denen Lobbyorganisationen mit im Boot sind. Von Anfang 2012 bis Ende 2015 gab es 59 derartige Veranstaltungen. Dies zeigt, dass es sich längst um ein umfassendes Phänomen handelt [...] Die Untersuchung zeigt weiterh
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in, dass die Verlage mit einer Vielzahl von Lobbyorganisationen aus den verschiedensten Branchen kooperieren. Dabei werden häufig auch Kooperationsformen gewählt, die potenziell zu mittleren bis hohen Einflussmöglichkeiten auf die inhaltliche Ausrichtung der Konferenz führen. Weiterhin scheint eine Mitwirkung der Redaktionen an diesen von den Verlagen organisierten Konferenzen gang und gäbe. Die Einbindung der Journalisten findet zumeist als Moderatoren statt, geht gelegentlich aber auch darüber hinaus. Die vorliegende Arbeit argumentiert, dass hierdurch, besonders in Kombination mit einer inhaltlich potenziell stark beeinflussten Konferenz, Gelegenheitsstrukturen entstehen können, die zur Interessenangleichung zwischen Journalisten und Lobbyisten bzw. zur Einschränkung der kritischen Perspektive beitragen." (Fazit, Seite 32)
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"With regards to professional role orientations, journalists in Qatar found it most important to influence public opinion, to advocate for social change, to support national development, to report things as they naturally are, to be a detached observer and to support government policy. About half of
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journalists in Qatar found it important to promote a positive image of political leadership, to provide the kind of news that attracts the largest audience, and to provide entertainment and relaxation. On the other hand, the following traits were only supported by a minority of respondents: monitor and scrutinize political leaders, monitor and scrutinize business, and acting as adversary of the government." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"Four “classic” roles: to report things as they are, to be a detached observer, to educate the audience and provide news that attracts the largest audience are fairly unanimously seen as the most important among Estonian journalists, as the relatively low standard deviations suggest. Especially
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‘educating audience’ is historically rooted role in Estonian journalism. Estonian journalists clearly distance themselves from the political power: very few of them would support government policy or are ready to convey a positive image of political leadership. At the same time only a minority of Estonian journalists perceive themselves as adversaries of the government.
Estonian journalists seem not to have any consensus concerning the roles that in one or another way guide people: provide information people need to make political decisions, motivate people to participate in political activity, support national development and set the political agenda. They also have different views on providing entertainment and relaxation and monitoring and scrutinizing political leaders. Generally, Estonian journalists tend to perceive their role as a critical but neutral observer who tries to serve as many people as possible, accepting also the right of people to express their views. Traditionally they see themselves as educators of the public. They have different views on the activist type of roles." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"With regards to professional role orientations, South Korean journalists found it most important to report things as they are, to provide analysis of current affairs, and to monitor and scrutinize business and political leaders. The relevance of these roles was fairly undisputed among the interview
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ed journalists as the relatively low standard deviations indicate. Likewise, there was a strong consensus among the respondents over the little importance of supporting government policy and conveying a positive image of political leadership. Still, a majority of journalists in South Korea found it important to be a detached observer, to promote tolerance and cultural diversity, to set the political agenda, to provide information people need to make political decisions, to let people express their views, to advocate for social change, and to motivate people to participate in political activity. To provide entertainment and relaxation, as well as politically more assertive roles like supporting government policy and conveying a positive image of political leadership, were supported by only a minority of respondents." (Journalistic roles, pages 1-2)
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"Journalists in Serbia seriously believe in their role to inform, interpret, educate and advocate for social change. Nearly all of them, with very little divergence, say the main role of journalism is to report things as they are, followed by providing analysis, promoting tolerance and diversity, ed
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ucating the audience, letting people express their views, advocating for social change, influencing public opinion, supporting national development and telling stories about the world. Around two thirds point to aspects of the watchdog-role as important in their work: monitoring and scrutinizing political leaders and businesses and providing information people need to make political decisions, as well as being a detached observer. Slightly more than half of the interviewed journalists believe it is their job to provide advice for daily life, and there is a relative agreement among them about this. Less popular journalistic roles of setting the political agenda and motivating people to take part in political activity enjoy support of 43.1 and 37.5 percent respectively, with a higher divergence of opinions. Similarly, the disagreement is relatively high over prioritizing entertainment and relaxation, or being an adversary of the government, each upheld by one third of respondents. Supporting government’s policy and conveying a positive image of political leadership are the two least popular journalistic roles (8.9 and 12.6 percent respectively), and journalists tend to agree about this." (Journalistic roles, pages 1-2)
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"Romanian journalists said that objectivity is the most important attribute of their work. They strongly believe that their job is to report events exactly the way they happened, without any external or internal intervention. The low standard deviations in these cases indicate that there is a high l
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evel of agreement (at least declarative agreement) on the most important roles of the Romanian journalists. In addition, Romanian journalists think they have a duty to serve their public. As shown in Table 1, they believe their role is to educate the audience and provide an analysis of the current problems. However, the standard deviation shows that there is not a high level of agreement on the main roles of the journalists. For the majority of the Romanian journalists it is essential to assume a social role in the community. They consider it important to promote tolerance and cultural diversity, to let people express their views, to support national development and to advocate for social change. The percentage of those who assume the role of watch dogs for the politicians is smaller; only half of the Romanian journalists questioned in this particular study believe it is important to monitor and scrutinize political leaders." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"With regards to professional role orientations, the vast majority of journalists in Mexico found it extremely or very important to report things as they are, followed in second place by the role of promoting tolerance and cultural diversity, and the role of advocating for social change in third pla
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ce. The fourth role to which Mexican journalist gave top importance in a most (5) to least (1) scale was to let people express their views, followed by the role of monitoring and scrutinizing political leaders in fifth place. The top roles show a rich mixture of adherence: from the classic Western roles of dissemination (reporting things as they are), to the roles more associated with mobilization and promotion of positive social outcomes (promoting tolerance or advocating for social change), followed by democratic roles such as serving as forum (let people express their views) and the watchdog function of the press (monitoring political leaders). There appears to be greater consensus around the ten most-popular roles, as shown by the relatively lower standard deviations, than in the bottom ten roles. This indicates the journalists who support those roles are unusual and the values they represent are a point of contention within the corps of journalists. For example, the least prioritized role was to convey a positive image of political leaders which however had a fairly high standard deviation, followed by the role of being an adversary to the government, which ranked in penultimate place in order of priority and had the second highest standard deviation of them all. This suggests some journalists consider both roles very important while others do not at all. The support of government policy was also the third least prioritized role, followed by that of providing entertainment and relaxation in fourth place and by the role of being a detached observer of events in fifth place of low priority, but which had the highest standard deviation of them all, suggesting very little agreement on how distant should journalists be from the stories they report on." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"With regards to professional role orientations, Kosovan journalists found it most important to report things as they are, to be a detached observer, to provide analysis of current affairs, and to promote tolerance and cultural diversity. The relevance of these “classic” roles was fairly undispu
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ted among the interviewed journalists as the relatively low standard deviations indicate. Likewise, there was a strong consensus among the respondents over the little importance of supporting government policy and conveying a positive image of political leadership. Still, a majority of journalists in Kosovo found it important to provide advice, orientation and direction for daily life, to educate the audience, to tell stories about the world, and to provide information people need to make political decisions. Politically more assertive roles, on the other hand, were supported by only a minority of respondents. Following traits belong to these roles: setting the political agenda, motivate people to participate in political activity, convey a positive image of political leadership, and support government policy." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"While answering questions about their professional roles, journalists in Bangladesh preferred being assertive with social issues. An overwhelming majority of the Bangladeshi journalists work to promote tolerance and cultural diversity (87.0%). They also put importance on advocacy for social change
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(79.6%), followed by letting people express their views (78.8%), providing analysis of current affairs (78.4%) and reporting things as they are (76.8%). They also prioritize political assertiveness by assigning importance and extreme importance to supporting national development (76.3%) and monitoring and scrutinizing political leaders (63.2%). Journalists, however, show the least interest in supporting government policies (28.7%). They ranked roles like being an adversary of the government (28.9%) or conveying a positive image of political leadership (37.3%) the lowest. The journalists in general aim to provide the kind of news that attracts the largest audience (75.9%)." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"With regards to professional role orientations, Argentinian journalists found it most important to report things as they were, to promote tolerance and cultural diversity, to provide analysis of current affairs, and to let people express their views (see Table 1). A majority of journalists in Argen
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tina found it important to monitor and scrutinize political leaders and business. Considering the political polarization context as it was seen in Argentina during the years when the survey was conducted, options of conveying a positive image of political leadership or being an adversary of the government were surprisingly supported by only a minority of respondents. They showed some consensus towards more politically assertive roles such as supporting government policy or setting political agenda, both roles related to partisan journalism. Regarding this popular model, half of the respondents considered important, in increasing order, setting the political agenda, motivating people to participate in political activity, influencing public opinion, supporting national development, providing information people need to make political decisions and advocating for social change." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"With regard to professional role orientations, South African journalists found it most important to report things as they are (92.5%), to educate the audience (86.8%), and to let people express their views (84.6%). The relevance of these roles was fairly undisputed among the interviewed journalists
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as the relatively low standard deviations indicate. A majority of journalists in South Africa found it important to provide analysis of current affairs, to promote tolerance and cultural diversity, to tell stories about the world and to be detached observers. In this process, the majority of the journalists supported the idea of watchdog-journalism, namely to monitor and scrutinize political leaders, as well as to monitor and scrutinize business. In a world awash in media entertainment, less than half of the journalists (43.6%) thought providing entertainment and relaxation were part of their work. On the whole, the impression was gained that the journalists took their work seriously, however they did not think that they should support government policy (9.6%) or convey a positive image of political leadership (9.0%). On the other hand, only less than a third (29.6%) thought they should motivate people to participate in political activity, and less than 20 percent thought that they should set the political agenda (17.4%) or be an adversary of government (13.3%)." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"Bhutanese journalists view their professional roles in very similar ways to Western journalists. The reason for this can partly be found in Bhutan’s effort to orientate its media on the media of Western democracies and therefore emphasize the “detached watchdog” role. “Report things as they
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are” (79.8%), “Be a detached observer” (73.3%) and “Provide analysis of current affairs” (73.0%) rank very highly amongst Bhutanese journalists. The “detached watchdog” role, however, is interspersed with a keen awareness of having to involve Bhutan’s population in the new form of democracy. “Let people express their views” (76.7%), “Educate the audience” (73.0%), “Provide information people need to make political decisions” (72.2%) and “Motivate people to participate in political activity” (66.7%) rank almost as highly as being a an information provider." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"Hong Kong journalists treated as most important the roles of monitoring and scrutinizing political leaders, reporting things as they are, monitoring and scrutinizing businesses, providing analysis of current affairs, and letting people express their views. Given the emphasis on monitoring the power
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holders, “to be a detached observer” was treated as important only by slightly more than half of the respondents. Twelve of the 18 roles included in the questionnaire were treated as important by fewer than half of the respondents. About one-third saw the advocacy role of the press as important, and about three in ten saw setting the political agenda and motivating people to participate in politics as important. The Hong Kong journalists were least likely to see conveying a positive image of political leadership, supporting government policy, providing entertainment and relaxation, and supporting national development as important roles. However, the percentage of journalists seeing the press as an adversary of the government is also low (14.4%). It indicates that the Hong Kong journalists saw themselves as an independent watchdog without being an adversary to the power holders." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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