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Employing the hierarchy of influences model this study examines source use in Covid-19 news coverage by Kenyan and Zimbabwean newspapers, an understudied area in Africa. A quantitative content analysis (N = 557) revealed the dominance of elites and men as sources and reporters. Women as sources were absent in 72% of all news stories while ordinary voices were present in only 9.3%. The voices of Covid-19 affected (victims and families of the sick/dead) were also neglected, appearing in less than 1% of news articles. Meanwhile, government officials, business executives, and representatives of civil society were the most privileged class in news sourcing. These findings align with extant literature suggesting the news media mute voices of women and ordinary citizens and privilege the opinions of elite men. The similarity in sourcing patterns between Kenyan and Zimbabwean newspapers, despite the different media and political systems, could be linked to the prevailing patriarchal culture in both nations that undermine women's participation in the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While ample scholarly attention has focused on how, through commemorative journalism during anniversaries, deaths or retirement, the journalistic community mobilize past accomplishments to bolster their cultural authority, very limited attention has been paid to how the journalistic community can mobilize negative memories in dealing with problematic situations that are similar to past journalistic scandals or shortcomings. Examining how financial journalists made sense of accusations that they missed the 2008 Global Financial Crisis story, this study analyzes how the journalistic community makes use of past shortcomings to negotiate its understanding of a new case from its breaking moment to its anniversary a decade later. The study finds that reporters relied on previous moments' incidents to explain and contextualize the Global Financial Crisis coverage as another missed story and use it as an opportunity to restate how they should refine their practice going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking a discursive approach, this study applies the concept of metajournalistic discourse to the study of press freedom debates in a postcolonial context stretching from 1993 to 2023 between the Zimbabwean public and private press. Based on a textual analysis of press freedom debates, combined with interviews with various news media stakeholders held between December 2022 and January 2023 in Harare, the study finds support for the previous argument that the idea of journalistic interpretive communities does not really hold under contested contexts beyond liberal Western democracies. The study extends this idea by reconceptualizing journalistic communities beyond liberal Western democracies as fractured interpretive communities. The study further argues that rising polarization and epistemic contests under liberal Western democracies now threaten journalistic interpretive communities as previously understood. This is especially so for those journalists who operate under a contested and polarized news media and political environment, without a single dominant national ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using textual analysis, this study compares and contrasts how newspapers from Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South Africa—countries at the centre of the September 2019 xenophobic attacks in South Africa—under different ownership patterns defined the problem of xenophobia, its causes and solutions. Understanding how xenophobia was framed is important, for it has implications on policy formulations in dealing with immigration. The study finds that although there were common frames across the newspapers, there were also significant differences between newspapers from sending and receiving countries. Privately controlled newspapers also framed the crisis differently as compared to government or publicly controlled newspapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing and contrasting the journalistic routines that manifest in a Zimbabwean political satire show, The Week with Cde Fatso, and those manifesting in content from the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation Television, the study argues that political satire's alternativeness as a form of journalism lies in its journalistic role performance. By subverting conventional journalistic routines, satire can offer an alternative version of journalism that is overlooked by traditional media due to different forces. Under Zimbabwe's conditions, The Week has risen to fulfil interventionist, watchdog and civic journalism roles that have been neglected by the national broadcaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A news reporting scandal implicating South Africa's Sunday Times in allegations of facilitating state capture during the regime of former president Jacob Zuma provoked debate over the proper journalistic practice, roles and guiding ethical values between journalists and press critics (e.g., academics). The majority of journalists defended the liberal normative news paradigm, while others joined hands with academics in questioning some of the norms' adequacy in the post-apartheid socio-political and technological context. The study argues that what emerges here is neither traditional paradigm repair nor paradigm reconsideration but tensions over paradigm adaptation to modify conventional journalism norms to suit the South African context. In other words, the scandal reignited post-apartheid debates about the role of the news media and what professionalism means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through textual analysis of Facebook comments on the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation's (ZBC) page, ZBC-TV News Online and Twitter hashtag, #RIPJudithMakwanya, the study explores how ordinary people remembered the station's veteran broadcaster upon her death in 2019. This was combined with interviews to understand journalists' reactions to the commentary. The study argues that digital platforms now allow press criticism on a public forum, enabling citizens to form their own interpretive communities and police each other. However, political economy factors undermine press criticism's effectiveness in shaping journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by a 2014 Constitutional Court opinion that under Zimbabwe's new constitution of 2013, freedom of expression might have to be considered as subordinate to human dignity, the study analyses the implications of this on journalistic practice. The study argues that such a move would undermine watchdog journalism, thereby limiting people's freedom of expression right to receive information. This is based on a textual analysis of Zimbabwe's freedom of expression jurisprudence, which shows that currently the odds are in favour of protecting the reputation of those in power. Thus, subordinating freedom of expression to human dignity might mean worsening an already bad situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]