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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]

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]

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]