Ethiopian Media: Journalists Trends of Using Sources in Reporting Stories

Scholars in the field of media studies argued that journalists tend to choose the sources for their stories considering they are reliable, trustworthy, authoritative and able to articulate issues very well as well as accessibility of the sources to meet the deadline of reporting the stories (Gans, 2004; Cottle, 2006, 2009). However, the author of this article wants to insight a discussion on the relationship between journalists and sources in a country like Ethiopia, where the media are working under political pressures. To explore this issue, ten journalists and four editors/ editors-in-chief of selected newspapers, namely, Addis Admas, Reporter, The Ethiopian Herald and The Daily Monitor, were interviewed to get answers why they prefer to use certain sources when they need information to report cases such as conflicts in the country. The overall result of the qualitative data indicates that journalists self-censor in selecting sources to report, particularly, internal conflicts and other sensitive issues of the country. It is because they tend to use certain official sources as a mechanism of minimizing pressures and to be safe. Hence, the relationship between the sources and the journalists shall be discussed in line with journalists’ self-censorship trends, journalists’ safety and the media situation in a country, which the scholars have not yet discussed. Keywords: Ethiopian media, conflict, self-censorship, source, political pressure