Determining what is newsworthy is a daily challenge even to the very people who source news, produce and disseminate it. This study is part an exposition and exploration of the different approaches that media researchers have used to explain and determine the value of news. Like similar research before it, this study more specifically delves into the news selection process of news of one particular newspaper with the goal of investigating why and how news is selected for publication in the front page. News is the 'result of many forces: ranging from source power, journalistic orientation, medium-preference and market model, news values and production routines and processes. The study briefly expounds on the different definitions of news as perceived in terms of the developed and developing world. Just as journalists do not operate in a vacuum, a close examination of the various definitions reveals that news cannot be defined in isolation. Its definition is intrinsically tied to that of news values. Also explored here are debates about news values and their Western rootedness. Here reference is made to literature regarding theories on the social construction of meanings and on the gatekeeping concept.The study is informed by similar research in gatekeeping studies and sociology of news studies. It is important to state at the outset that the study is not concerned with how news is produced but why there is a bias for certain kinds of news. I am interested in explaining why and how the writers and editors at the East African Standard make decisions about what is worthy of being published on the front page of the newspaper. This distinction is necessary because the theories that inform this study transcend news sourcing and production. This study takes cognizance ofthe fact that one cannot separate social processes from the individual and vice versa. For this reason, this study investigates and analyses the biases of individual gatekeepers at the East African Standard as well as their collective biases. In the concluding section, this study calls for an alternative paradigm for journalism and news. The foregoing discussions in the other sections prove that a universal definition of news and what is newsworthy will not suffice and there is need to contexualise it.

This study investigates the Daily Nation and Standard’s news coverage of Kenya’s 2007/2008 general election and the unprecedented eruptions of violence which followed. This research responds to the question which came about as Kenyan print journalists and editors considered their role in possibly contributing to the violence, which took on an ethnic dimension. Vernacular radio has been fingered for having escalated longstanding ethnic tensions, but the role of the press has not been fully understood. In the aftermath of the violence, print journalists and editors met over a series of Round Table events in Nairobi to consider whether their conduct during the election could have encouraged violence. Although ten years have passed since this incidence, much of what happened within the Kenyan print media during and after the 2007/2008 general election remains unexplored and, largely, unexplained today. Although the pre- and post-election phases spanned months, my research is confined to purposive samples from a four-week period from 3 December 2007 to 4 January 2008. These four weeks were selected as they are roughly representative of the three phases of the national election which are considered significant to this study, namely the pre-election phase, the election, and the post-election violence. The research is concerned with analysing and understanding the coverage in the two dailies, the Daily Nation and Standard, and comparing the discursive work of the two, particularly in relation to identity and ethnicity. This study draws on cultural studies, critical discourse analysis and normative theories of the media to inform the research project. The critical discourse analysis explores the discourses articulated during and after the election, with a particular focus on issues of identity, ethnicity and incitement. Through this process the study found that both publications avoided references to ethnicity, despite this being an important factor in Kenyan politics and voter behaviour. In analysing these issues the study found that while the publications might claim to attempt to avoid fuelling tensions by not reporting on ethnicity, the disavowal comprised a silence which positioned the press in a collaborative role, in which it colluded with a powerful Kenyan state. Although a significant amount of time has gone by since the 2007/2008 elections, this study still considers the event significant in understanding the conduct of journalists during times of violence, and specifically for the future of journalism in Kenya.

This thesis, titled “Normative Media Theory and the Rethinking of the Role of the Kenyan Media in a Changing Social Economic Context,” is a theoretical study that discusses the role of normative media theory in shaping and guiding debate on the role of the media and attendant policy making processes in a changing Kenyan social economic context. This is done against the background of acknowledgment of the general state of flux that characterizes normative media theory in a postmodern, globalized and new media landscape. The study thus extensively describes the Kenyan media landscape, with a view to demonstrating how it has and is continuing to be transformed by a variety of developments in the social economic set up of the Kenyan society. In order to provide a theoretical basis for explaining these developments, the study then indulges in an extensive theoretical discussion that presents a synthesis of current arguments in the area of normative media theory. This discussion fundamentally brings to the fore the challenges which characterizes normative media theory in a changing social economic context and therefore the inability of traditional normative theory to account for new developments in the media and society in general. In an attempt to integrate normative media theory and practice, the study then discusses (against the backdrop of theory) the views and opinions of key role players in the Kenyan media landscape, in regard to how they perceive the role of the media. Particular attention is given, inter alia, to matters such as media ownership, media accountability processes, changing media and communication technologies, a changing constitutional landscape, the role of the government in the Kenyan media landscape, the place of African moral philosophy in explaining the role of the media in Kenya, and the growth of local language radio. Finally, on the bases of theory, experiences from other parts of the world and the views of key role players in the Kenyan media landscape, the study presents several normative guidelines on how normative theory and media policy making in Kenya could meet each other, taking into account the changes occasioned by globalization and the new media landscape. These proposals are essentially made to enrich general debate on the role of the media in Kenya, as well as attendant media policy making efforts. / Communication / D.Litt. et Phil. (Communication)

This study investigates how journalists experience economic and political pressures on their ethical decisions at the Nation Media Group (NMG) conglomerate in Kenya. The study uses qualitative semi- structured interviews to examine how journalists experience these pressures on their professional ethics as they make their daily decisions. Grounded in the critical political economy of the media tradition, the findings of the study indicate that economic and political pressures from advertisers, shareholders’ interests, the profit motive and the highly ethnicised political environment in Kenya largely compromise the ethical decisions of journalists. The study draws on the work done by Herman and Chomsky in their ‘Propaganda Model’ in which they propose ‘filters’ as the analytical indicators of the forms that political and economic pressures that journalists experience may take. The study explores the ways in which journalists experience these pressures, how they respond to the pressures and the ways in which their responses may compromise their journalism ethics. The findings indicate that aside from the pressures from the primary five filters outlined in the Propaganda Model, ethnicity in Kenyan newsrooms is a key ‘filter’ that may compromise the ethical decisions of journalists at the NMG. The study therefore argues that there is a need to modify the explanatory power of the Propaganda Model when applying it to the Kenyan context to include ethnicity as a ‘sixth filter’ that should be understood in relation to the five primary filters. From the findings, it would seem that the government is no longer a major threat to journalists’ freedom and responsibility in Kenya. Market forces and ethnicity in newsrooms pose the greatest threat to journalists’ freedom and responsibility. The study therefore calls for a revision of the normative framework within which journalists’ and media performance in Kenya is assessed. As the study findings show, the prevailing liberal- democratic model ignores the commercial and economic threats the ‘free market’ poses to journalism ethics as well as ethnicity in newsrooms and only focuses on the media- government relations, treating the government as the major threat to media freedom.

This thesis, titled “Normative Media Theory and the Rethinking of the Role of the Kenyan Media in a Changing Social Economic Context,” is a theoretical study that discusses the role of normative media theory in shaping and guiding debate on the role of the media and attendant policy making processes in a changing Kenyan social economic context. This is done against the background of acknowledgment of the general state of flux that characterizes normative media theory in a postmodern, globalized and new media landscape. The study thus extensively describes the Kenyan media landscape, with a view to demonstrating how it has and is continuing to be transformed by a variety of developments in the social economic set up of the Kenyan society. In order to provide a theoretical basis for explaining these developments, the study then indulges in an extensive theoretical discussion that presents a synthesis of current arguments in the area of normative media theory. This discussion fundamentally brings to the fore the challenges which characterizes normative media theory in a changing social economic context and therefore the inability of traditional normative theory to account for new developments in the media and society in general. In an attempt to integrate normative media theory and practice, the study then discusses (against the backdrop of theory) the views and opinions of key role players in the Kenyan media landscape, in regard to how they perceive the role of the media. Particular attention is given, inter alia, to matters such as media ownership, media accountability processes, changing media and communication technologies, a changing constitutional landscape, the role of the government in the Kenyan media landscape, the place of African moral philosophy in explaining the role of the media in Kenya, and the growth of local language radio. Finally, on the bases of theory, experiences from other parts of the world and the views of key role players in the Kenyan media landscape, the study presents several normative guidelines on how normative theory and media policy making in Kenya could meet each other, taking into account the changes occasioned by globalization and the new media landscape. These proposals are essentially made to enrich general debate on the role of the media in Kenya, as well as attendant media policy making efforts. / Communication / D.Litt. et Phil. (Communication)