Although the approach in this study is largely focused on individual journalists' value and principles, the analyses will be made in relation to broader issues involving political systems, media contents and ideologies with regard to ethics and journalism practices. It follows a similar approach at a research direction level with Gans (1979) and Gitlin (1980) in Brecken Chinn Swartz (2006, 32) in that it aims at 'a qualitative examination of producer intent, seeking to ground terms in concepts that journalists themselves choose to articulate.‘
To this end, the data collection processes involves three categories. These three categories have been developed based on the issues raised by the journalists themselves when they are interviewed in the process of gathering the data and theoretical basses found out in the process of analyzing the data. The three broader categories used in this research project are, Political environment, contents produced and the individual journalist‘s values and principles in their own words. The categories are meant for getting a comprehensive picture of the core investigation of this research project which is Ethiopian journalists' values and principles within the context of journalism ethics in Ethiopia. What are the values and principles Ethiopian journalists hold in doing journalism and how news decisions are made. To this end it is believed that looking at the political environment, which is directly related to journalism practices these days and raised as a big factor of influence by the journalists themselves time and again, the content produced for they reflect how values and principles are being actually practiced and the core elements that makes why journalism ethics issues are worth talking about in the first place and individual journalists own words for they are the major actors in the profession would help investigate what
is deep down in their minds, their socialization and attitudes toward ethics. As Gans (1979) and
Gitlin (1980) call it ‗communicater- cenetred approach‘ is developed in the belief that media
content is influenced by journalists‘ socialization and attitudes as formed by psychological,
personal, political, and professional attitudes intrinsic to the individual journalist‘. This research project would also share the gist of these authors and believe that investigating the stated areas above would be possible to have a better understanding of the minds and the decisions that are used and made to have the final journalism products. This would lead to investigating the influences on news decision making processes.
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The first group of data is collected from various sources that are indicative of the political environment in the nation. The idea to consider such would help understand journalists‘ values and principles in context. Therefore instead of simply going and trying to know individual journalists mind ,assessing the political environment each group of the subjects of the study, the domestic and the Diaspora Ethiopian journalists, are working in would be of great importance. The environment will be assessed within the context of political ideologies, particularly the authoritarian and the liberal political views with a specific focus on freedom of expression and more importantly journalism practices. The liberal is chosen because the Diaspora journalists are living and working in countries that are with a liberal political environment. The authoritarian is used because, as it was discussed in the previous section, Ethiopian political system is dominantly believed to be categorized under the authoritarian regime when it comes to journalism and freedom of expression.
In trying to have a deeper insight into the political environment government policies, activists reports, journalists complaints, court cases, meeting records, proceedings which contain Ethiopian journalism as their major topic were all consulted.
The second category is the contents published by the journalists and have been already used by their target audiences. From the contents a lot can be inferred about values and standards. The contents will be chosen in being conscious to have a similar topic and published at the same period of time for it would help compare and contrast different journalists‘ works with a special emphasis on the two major groups of subjects, the domestic journalists under authoritarian regime and the Diaspora ones in a liberal world. The domestic journalists in this study cover only the private ones. I believe that government journalists are more or less working under a direct command by government loyalist bosses while relatively speaking the private media has contextual freedom to do its job. This is to mean that at least the private journalists would decide on their stories by their own given that it might have consequences. Therefore it sounds logical to assess how the private journalists decide and what they value instead of government journalists whose values and principles night not do better than being held by them or it sounds their values doesn‘t do anything for their daily job.
The content review is based on Stephen J. A. Ward‘s (2009) lists of assessment areas in ethical
practices of journalism and Kazuhiro Maeshima‘s (2007) five categories for content analyzing
values and principles of journalism ethics. I chose them because they could give a good insight into the matter under investigation. The following are lists of areas the authors used for their
research. The first three are from Ward (2009,) and the rest from Maeshima (2007).
1 editorial independence 2 verification of stories 3 anonymity of sources
38 4 main topic of the article9media agenda)
5 Key concepts 6 actors in the report
7 Positive-negative portrayal of each actor 8 sources and quotations of the news.
Editorials of each media would also be worth analyzing for it exposes the media stands and values than any other writings. Now a merger and a slight modification of the above list to make it fit with this project gives us the following final list of this research;
1 Editorial Independence 2 Verification of stories 3 Sources and quotations 4 key concepts and main topic 5 Tone of the story
The editorial independence is an indicative of journalism practices where we could assess the extent to which ethical journalism adhered to without any impositions. This makes my assessment of individual journalist‘s orientations meaningful in a way knowing a mind working with lots of interference at least without the will does not give sense.
Verification of stories is also something that significantly affects ethical practices and indicative of value systems and consideration of ethical journalism. This should be one of the areas where journalists‘ argument and views and applications would be assessed to more understand the problem under investigation. The key concepts and the tone of the story would also speak volume about values and ethical standards if examined between lines.
The analyses of these features would be in relation to ethical journalism values and principles to figure out the consistency of their beliefs and what is reflected in there and identify the current trend of journalism practices.
The third category goes to assessing the journalists‘ minds. Here the major data collected could be said are responses of journalists from in-depth interviews conducted and survey questionnaires distributed to both the domestic and the Diaspora journalists.
The emphasized areas of questions in the interview guide are organized in such a manner that would assess the core problem of this research project from various angles. It incorporated questions from self regulation tools to universally acceptable values and principles of journalism
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ethics, from personal commitment to ethics to factors affecting their job, from self assessment on ethical practices to evaluating others, from hierarchies of various ethical values to the handling of ethical dilemma cases. The advantage for interviewing face to face is that the researcher does have the opportunity to make a follow up questions and seek further explanation for issues that would require so. Therefore the data from the interview contained the major input to get answers for the research questions.
The survey questions are also designed on the bases of the research questions. In order to assess
journalists‘ views and experiences on ethical values and different news approaches, journalists were asked to give their responses for thirteen statements listed which are indicative of various news values and news approaches (deontological and teleological ).The Cronbach‘s alpha measured to see internal consistence and reliability is .796.( for further detail see table 1 of the questionnaire of domestic press attached in the appendices). The responses were measured using a liker scale where it measured the agreement levels of the journalists with statements listed. In assessing how they do resolve ethical dilemmas in their daily practices of journalism, three case stories were presented in the questionnaire and the respondents were asked to first give their general impression on whether they report or not the stories listed in the case. And after that they were asked to indicate their level of importance for the lists of statements that are believed to be factors influencing the decision. The measurement was a 7 point likert scale. In addition open ended questions that gives opportunity for the respondents to write their own take on the issues have been included. The Cronbach‘s alpha for case 1 is .998, case 2 is .987 and case 3 is .983. Pertaining to how they describe the current ethical practices of journalism in Ethiopia, lists of statements containing values like accuracy, relevance, sensationality, depth, objectivity, public trust, fact opinion confusion and diversity were presented and the respondents were required to indicate their level of agreement with the statements describing the Ethiopian journalism practices. Open ended questions were also administered to capture the journalists‘ evaluation of the nation‘s media in their own words. Cronbach‘s alpha was measured .640. The same procedure is used to find out factors influencing their values and principles and where they think the source or the background of their value systems. The Cronbach‘s alpha measured is .989 and .191 respectively. Because the latter was so small and doesn‘t fit with the recommended values, the section was analyzed on individual bases. The statements used for assessing the factors influencing their values included market forces like advertisements, religious and political affiliations, journalists associations and colleagues while the statements used to assess the background of values included educational background, upbringing, parents and current family life.(For further details see table 8 and 16 of the questionnaire attached in the appendices)
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