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.

The function of a journalist is not only to inform but also to investigate. Since the public has a right to information, jurists need to protect journalists that report from dangerous war-torn regions in order to keep the world informed. As the primary reliable source and often eyewitness to humanitarian atrocities a journalist has a duty to report such atrocities. There has for several decades now been uncertainty regarding the fact whether journalists should be granted special protection or not. On the one hand it is argued that journalists should be protected in terms of humanitarian law due to their humanitarian function, the service that they render in facilitating the free flow of information to the world and the role that journalists play in society. On the other hand, some argue that the protection of journalists is not the responsibility of the international community but rather their individual national governments or local news organisations. / Jurisprudence / LL.M.

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 master thesis examines the political and particular media situation in 1832, with the stress on spreading the liberal ideas and their attempt to influence the public via one typical German journal for this period. Over six months, there was an extraordinary situation in Baden, when the censorship was restricted and suddenly there arose, for this period, unexpected possibilities for journalists. As a reaction to reduction of censorship, the journal Der Freisinnige was established. Although its existence was short-lived, manifestation of liberal values and reflection of contemporary opinions is evident. This journal was more important and powerful than any other because of the cooperation with one of the main initiators of liberalism, Karl von Rotteck, who was also active in politics. This connection of two roles was very powerful. Freedom of speech, understood as one of the major liberal demands, allowed the practical promotion of liberal ideas among citizens. This case study pays attention to this particular year, within the political inclinations and tendencies over the period 1815-1832 of the Grand Duchy of Baden and former German Confederation. There were clear connections to the events in the first third of the nineteen century, that made the short-time fall of censorship happen. At the...

The Media High Council (MHC) was put in place by the 2003 constitution of the Republic of Rwanda as amended to today. As article 34 clarifies, the MHC is an independent institution which aims to address issues of media and press freedom. In the same spirit, the law number 30 /2009 of 16/9/2009 determines its mission, organisation and functioning. According to article 2 of this law, the Media High Council is responsible for protection, control and promotion of media and media professionals. Based on normative theories, qualitative methods and thematic analysis, this study has explored the policy formation of the Media High Council and how it has been balancing the seeming contradictory responsibilities of protecting and controlling media from 2007 to 2010. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication)

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No description available.

Notre travail a comme objectif d’étudier la fonction de la Nouvelle gazette rhénane pendant la révolution de 1848 en Allemagne. A partir d’un corpus constitué des numéros du journal, y compris les éditions spéciales et les suppléments, notre étude analyse la conception du journal voulue par ses fondateurs, sa réalisation journalistique ainsi que l’évolution de sa ligne politique. Comme outil d’analyse nous nous appuyons sur la notion de l’espace public, notamment de l’espace public bourgeois, conçue par Jürgen Habermas en 1961, mais aussi sur les notions d’un espace public plébéien et d’un espace public prolétarien que la recherche a développées entre-temps. Après avoir étudié l’état de l’espace public en Allemagne, l’évolution du mouvement ouvrier avant et au début de la révolution et les prémices de la Nouvelle gazette rhénane, nous développons l’hypothèse que le journal fut un projet indépendant, explicitement conçu pour l’espace public bourgeois, en parallèle avec le projet de la Ligue des communistes qui, elle, a été créée à l’attention du mouvement ouvrier et pour l’espace public prolétarien naissant. La conception de la Nouvelle gazette rhénane puise ses sources dans les analyses de ses fondateurs, notamment de son rédacteur en chef Karl Marx, notamment en ce qui concerne la situation en Allemagne et en Europe. Suivant ces analyses, le journal a l’exigence de peser sur le cours de la révolution. L’idée de départ est de faire pression sur les parties progressistes de la bourgeoisie. En conséquence sa stratégie est de s’insérer dans le mouvement démocrate afin de pousser les démocrates vers une politique de confrontation avec la monarchie absolue. En s’adaptant au début de son existence aux critères de l’espace public bourgeois, la Nouvelle gazette rhénane correspond aux critères d’excellence de son époque : son travail rédactionnel, son organisation, sa production matérielle et sa distribution sont à la pointe du journalisme politique. Notre étude statistique des articles concernant l’Allemagne et l’étranger montre qu’il s’agit d’un journal prussien qui bénéficie d’un réseau dense de correspondants dans les régions et les Etats d’Allemagne ainsi qu’en Europe. Un accent particulier est porté sur les informations venant des pays européens. Ce fait s’explique par la conception européenne que le journal a de la révolution de 1848.La particularité du journal est à notre sens qu’il a accompagné toutes les modifications de l’espace public pendant la révolution. Sa politique se caractérise par la défense de la révolution et en premier lieu la défense de la liberté de la presse. Confronté à un morcellement et une destruction partielle de l’espace public bourgeois, sa ligne politique évolue d’une critique de la politique des parlements de Francfort et de Berlin vers une ligne de plus en plus insurrectionnelle. Notamment pendant les crises de septembre et de novembre, son influence sur les démocrates est notable sans qu’elle puisse s’imposer entièrement. En réaction à un bilan négatif de la politique du mouvement démocrate, ses rédacteurs quittent leurs fonctions dirigeantes au sein du mouvement au printemps 1849 pour intégrer la fraternité ouvrière (Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverbrüderung) de Leipzig. Cette décision correspond à une orientation vers l’espace public prolétarien ; le processus de cette réorientation est cependant interrompu par la fin de la révolution et ne pourra pas se concrétiser. / Our work has the objective of studying the function of die Neue Rheinische Zeitung during the German revolution in 1848. Our work is based on a corpus that consists of all the numbers of the journal that comprise of special editions and supplements. Our study analyses the conception of the newspaper as imagined by its founders, its journalistic creation as well as the evolution of its political direction. The basis of our analysis is the notion of public sphere, notably the bourgeois public sphere conceived by Jürgen Habermas in 1961 but also the notions of the plebeian public sphere and the proletarian public sphere. These notions had been developped by the research in the meantime.After having studied the situation of the public sphere in Germany and the evolution of the labour movement that already existed at the start of the revolution and the beginnings of die Neue Rheinische Zeitung, we developped the hypothesis that the journal was an independent project conceived for the bourgeois public sphere in parallel with the project of the Communist League, which was created for the attention of the labour movement and the emerging proletarian public sphere. The conception of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung takes its inspiration from his founders, namely chief contributor Karl Marx and his analyses about the situation in Germany and in Europe. According to his analysis, the newspaper had an impact on the course of the revolution. The first idea behind it is to put the progressive parties under pressure. Consequently, his strategy is to enter the democratic movement in order to push its members towards a political confrontation with the monarchy. At the start of its existence, it adapted itself to the criteria of the bourgeois public sphere and therefore matched the criteria and the political standards of journalism at that time in terms of writing skills, organization, production and distribution. Our statistics of the articles dealing with Germany and other foreign countries show that it is about a Prussian newspaper, which benefited from a wide network of correspondents in the regions and states in Germany as well as Europe. Information coming from European countries is extremely important, certainly because of the European conception which the journal developed of the revolution in 1848. A particular feature of the journal is that it followed all the changes of the public sphere during the revolution. Its politics was characterized by the defence of the revolution ad in the first instance of the Freedom of the Press. Confronted by a splitting up and a partial destruction of the bourgeois public sphere, the political movement started moving from a critic of the Parliaments in Frankfurt and Berlin into a more and more insurrectional direction against the government. During the crises of September and November 1848, its influence on the democrats is notable without being completely imposing. In reaction to the negative results of the democratic political movement, the contributors started quitting the leadership in Rhineland in spring 1849 to integrate die Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverbrüderung of Leipzig. The decision corresponded to a changing direction towards the proletarian public sphere whose progress had been interrupted by the end of the revolution and could not be realized.

The aim of this thesis is to study how the international media CNN frame their news reporting with the change of presidency in America, after a year of being accused of spreading fake news by president Trump. By using a Critical Discourse Analysis, CDA and a rhetorical analysis I examined a selection of articles published in CNN. In total I examined ten articles from 2015 focusing on how CNN choose to portray the identity of the president at the time Barack Obama. I also selected ten articles from 2017 to analyze how the CNN choose to construct Trumps identity a year after his ascent to the president office. The result show that Barack Obama is portrayed as an inspiring president always there for his people. Donald Trump is instead portrayed as a bad leader for the country while CNN started to focus on regaining the trust of the public. In 2015 CNN also used more pathos and ethos arguments than in 2017 when they instead focus on arguments through logos. CNN show that they stand by their goal to control and oversee the power of governments in democracy. Media and governments in a democracy work together to balance their power. / Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att studera hur det internationella mediet CNN gestaltar sin nyhetsrapportering, med förändringen av olika presidenter, efter ett år att ha blivit anklagade att sprida falska nyheter av president Trump. Genom att använda en kritisk diskursanalys och en retorisk analys undersökte jag ett urval av artiklar publicerade i CNN. Totalt studerade jag tio artiklar från 2015 som handlade om Barack Obama som var president det året. Sedan valde jag tio artiklar från 2017 för att analysera hur CNN valde att gestalta Trumps identitet, ett år efter han blivit president. Resultatet visade att Barack Obama gestaltas som en inspirerande ledare som alltid finns där för sitt folk. Donald Trump gestaltades istället som en sämre ledare för landet och CNN fokuserade på att vinna tillbaka förtroendet från allmänheten. 2015 använde CNN också mer patos och etosargument än 2017 då de istället fokuserade på logosargument. CNN visar att de står fast vid sitt uppdrag att kontrollera och bevaka demokratiska länders regeringar. Medierna och regeringar arbetar tillsammans för att balansera sin makt.