Academic literature on the topic 'Journalism – Political aspects – Uganda'

This study seeks to examine how Ugandan journalists’ and politicians’ views on journalism professionalisation in Uganda relate to the broad theoretical arguments about professionalism within sociology and media studies. It also seeks to examine how such views impact on the democratic role of the media. The study finds out that there are two sets of distinct ideas on journalism professionalisation. The idea espoused by politicians is statutory professionalisation in which the state plays a major role through regulation and control, hence professionalisation is seen primarily as a control system. On the other hand, journalists perceive professionalisation as nurtured by voluntarily and socially inculcated professional values, hence as a value system. The study however, finds that both sets of understandings have their own complexities. While the statutory approach has complexities like how core elements of professionalism such as professional values can be imposed through legislation, the voluntary approach to professionalism also exhibits tensions within, especially stemming from the relationship between the professional and the news organisation regarding what constitutes professionalism. The study concludes that both sets of ideas have implications for the democratic role of the media, with both perceptions of professionalism curtailing this role. Statutory professionalisation in the Ugandan political context where the state is the dominant institution brings media institutions within its control, which leads to suppression of content of democratic value through a number of means. On the other hand, the self-regulatory perception does not protect media professionalism from the assault of commercial imperatives, especially when fused with state patronage in regard to broadcasting licences and placement of advertising.

The media today are under pressure from various fronts including governments, businesses as well as cultural interests. In the developed world, this pressure that led to the emergence of a new form of journalism that puts the demands of the market at the forefront. This commercial oriented journalism gives priority to articles that attract mass audiences like entertainment while it downplays information that promotes debates that is necessary for citizens to be able to have a voice on the issues that affect them. And since participation and discussion are cornerstones of a democratic process, market-driven journalism undermines democracy because it narrows down the forum for debate. As a result, active citizens are turned into passive observers in society. Although several studies about this phenomenon have been done in the western world, the same is happening in Africa because the media face similar challenges as in the West; challenges of globalisation and media conglomeration facilitated by the rapid advancing technology. This study, which is informed by political economy and market-driven journalism theories, notes that the media in Uganda are also faced with these challenges. The study is focused on Uganda’s only independent newspaper, The Monitor. The findings indicate that market-driven journalism is taking root at the expense of journalism that promotes citizenship and debate such as political reporting and opinions. For example, there has been an increase of entertainment, sports and supplement articles in The Monitor as compared to declining political reporting and opinions. More so, investigative reporting has dwindled over the years at the expense of increasing use of press releases. This is because entertainment and sports articles can attract big audiences that the newspaper needs to sell to advertisers. Advertisers are important because they provide financial support to the newspaper. However, in a country where democracy is in its formative stages, public information is necessary not only for citizens to make informed decisions but also to spur economic as well as social development.

Red Pepper has been the subject of much discussion in Uganda, with some accounts describing it as a liberal mouthpiece, and others as pornography. This case study, therefore, sought to investigate Red Pepper as a media phenomenon in Uganda in the 21st century, specifically between 2001 and 2004. Employing quantitative and qualitative methodologies, it focused on the production process and the text. Although sexualised content dominate its pages, and news about issues such as the environment and education are near-absent, its managers describe the publication as legitimate, normative and consistent with liberal media standards. Accordingly, to interrogate Red Pepper in terms of its journalistic functions, selected debates associated with liberal approaches to news media, media political economy, tabloidisation, pornography and gendered relations were reviewed. The analysis entailed five phases. The first was a denotative or descriptive analysis, which focused on the publication's structure and content focus. This was followed by an interview with management, a broad content analysis to establish the incidence of predefined content categories expected of the tabloid, pornographic and liberal press and, lastly, a theme-based content analysis that sought to establish the potential meanings and framing of the dominant content categories of gossip and sexualised copy. Overall, the study found Red Pepper to be a misogynistic tabloid, having elements said to belong to pornography and homophobia. According to the findings, not only does Red Pepper fall short of a liberal understanding of a newspaper in terms of diversity of topics, provision of information and professional practice, it also does not fit the understanding of an alternative public sphere, mainly because it fails to challenge the patriarchal framing of sex, sexuality and gendered relations. This framing is undertaken deliberately as a means to securing economic rather than journalistic ideals to which the editors pay lip service. Consequently, the gossip and sexualised content are not problematised and as such discourses and power relations therein are not interrogated. Neither are inadequacies in local systems addressed nor corrective action mobilised as expected of some tabloids. All in all, the publication fronts superficial entertainment content that echoes particular gender constructions and patriarchal commonsense and entrenches the (undesirable) status quo which, ironically, it claims to challenge.

Thesis (MPhil (Journalism))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006.<br>The leading South African media groups are subject to many challenges to their political economic interests as part of the international capitalist profit economy. These challenges coincided with the democratization and transformation of South Africa since 1994, which heralded many changes to the national political economic context within which media companies operate.

The press in Uganda has come a long way right from the colonial days when newspapers sprang up, mainly from missionary activity, through the eras of Obote 1 (1962 – 1971), Idi Amin (1971 – 1979), Obote 11 (1980 – 1985), Tito Okello (1985 – 1986) and the Museveni administration (1986 – to date). For most of this time, the press in Uganda enjoyed very little or no freedom to do its work. The year 1986 saw the ascendancy to power of the Yoweri Museveni as president after a five-year bush war with promised to restore peace, democracy, the rule of law, economic prosperity and civic rights and freedoms. Several achievements in these areas have been registered since 1986. Newspapers have sprouted and the broadcast industry liberalised to allow private ownership that has seen the proliferation of FM stations. However, the relations between the government and the press remain strained with journalists arrested and/or prosecuted mainly for offences relating to sedition, publication of false news and criminal libel. This study was intended to examine why journalists in Uganda continue to suffer arrests and incarceration when the country has been reported to be moving towards democratisation. The study was also aimed at assessing the impact of arresting journalists and arraigning them before the courts of law in the period under study and what this portends for freedom of the press and democratisation. It is recommended, among others, that journalists in Uganda need more unity of purpose to pursue meaningful media law reform that will de-criminalise publication wrongs. The civil remedies available to people who feel offended by the press are sufficient, if not excessive. The efforts already undertaken by the Eastern Africa Media Institute (EAMI) Uganda Chapter in this direction should be pursued to a logical conclusion.

This study is a comparative examination of approaches to talk radio as a genre on three Ugandan radio stations. The aim is to draw conclusions, from observations made about these stations, about the potential of talk radio to encourage public debate around social issues and improve democratic participation despite pertinent challenges in Uganda. The study first outlines a theoretical framework, which is informed by Habermas's theory of the media as a 'public sphere'. This framework is applied to an exploration of traditions of talk radio that have emerged globally in order to assess the potential of these traditions to play a role in contributing to the establishment of such a 'public sphere'. The study then goes on to discuss the historical development of radio in Uganda and the establishment of the current broadcast landscape. The focus is on the way in which this history has been defined by a struggle around public expression, in which government has repeatedly sought ways to control media as a vehicle for public expression. It is proposed that Ugandan talk radio has the potential to play an important role in ensuring broad participation in public expression. It is against this background that the study then describes and analyses the development of the talk genre at three Ugandan radio stations (each one an example of, respectively, a commercial, community and public service station). It is explained that staff on all three stations emphasise the importance of talk radio in encouraging participation, by their audiences, in the public debate of social and political issues. It is argued that, because of limitations that exist within these stations, none of the talk show teams fully realize the potential of the genre for participation in such debate. The picture that emerges is one of unequal access, with those sections of radio audiences in positions of privilege being further empowered, while those on the margins remain excluded from public discussion. The study finally recommends ways to improve public participation on Ugandan talk radio, noting the need to review government support, the problems of organizational culture within the stations, the need for more guidelines on practical arrangements around talk show production and the question of contradictions that exist at policy level.

On July 29 2000, Uganda held a referendum to decide whether to continue with the ruling Noparty Movement system or to revert to the Multi-party platform. This research entails a qualitative content analysis of the role the media played in driving debate and understanding of the referendum and its role in the country’s democratisation process. The research is informed by Jurgen Habermas’s public sphere paradigm as well as the sociological theory of news production. The research covers Uganda’s two English dailies – The New Vision and The Monitor, examining whether they provided a public sphere accessible to all citizens and devoid of ideological hegemony. It concludes that the newspapers were incapable of providing such a sphere because of the structural nature of Ugandan society and the papers’ own capitalistic backgrounds and ownership interests. The research concludes that such English language newspapers published in a country with a low literacy rate and low income levels, can only provide a public sphere to elite and privileged sections of society. A case is then made that multiple public spheres would be better suited to represent the views of diverse interest groups.

In a prison cell in Johannesburg in 1953 after months of solitary confinement Ruth First, one of South Africa's finest investigative joumalists, attempted to commit suicide. In a sense, information for this thesis has been gathered around the question of why First felt her life had reached a point where she wished it extinguished. The answer involves who she was, what she believed in and her perception at that moment in time of the magnitude of the defeat of all she had worked for. But this question has broader implications - it has been asked because its answer throws light not only on the particular joumalist, but on the radical press and on the political movements which gave it both life and readers. This study is divided into six sections: Origins and influences looks, firstly, at early Jewish migrations and Ruth's life up to the end of her schooling in Johannesburg, then at her university years and the influence on her life of the Communist Party of South Africa. A vigorously provocative life traces debates which led to the formation of the South African Congress of Democrats and the Congress Alliance. It looks, also, at the political influence of the white Left and the radical social fratemity. Trumpeters of freedom locates the origins of the radical press tradition in South Africa, then looks at the development of the two publications to which Ruth devoted most of her time: The Guardian/New Age and Fighting Talk. Writing left focuses on First's writing in connection with three campaigns: the farm labour and the potato boycott, womens' passes and the bus boycotts. These chapters are not a history of these campaigns, but an analysis of the influence on them of First's joumalism. Word wars is about the Treason Trial of 1956. The contention here is that the trial, in which First was one of the 'chief co-conspirators ', not only put the Congress Alliance in the dock, but was about the definition of three words: communism, violence and treason. In many ways it was a trial of the language of the Left, the tools of First's trade. Shifting focus looks at the period after Sharpeville and the 1960 State of Emergency. It considers the shift in First's writing necessitated by greater political oppression, a banning order and her exploration of the writing of books. Chapter 12 considers the massive setback to the Congress Alliance of the Rivonia Trial and the tactical errors which led the Congress leadership to the conclusion that armed struggle would succeed at that point in time. The final chapter is about First's detention, and her perceived personal defeat which resulted in her attempted suicide. The Postscript looks at First's successful attempts to come to terms with both a political and personal defeat. The work effectively ends, however, with her departure from South Africa.