Analysis Of Health News Reporting By Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation

The aim of this study is to examine the content of EBC’s Amharic television health news in termsrnof the journalistic ethical standards and audiences’ gratification. The study used mixed method asrna research approach. Data were collected from media content and in-depth interviews. The contentrnof 75 news stories were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. For the audience gratificationrnpart, data from 15 in-depth interviews with audiences from Addis Ababa were also interpretedrnqualitatively. The qualitative data was analyzed thematically and frequency distribution methodrnwas used to analyze the quantitative data. In order to give the study focus, four elements of mediarnethics: clarity, impartiality, accuracy and decency were used as frames of analysis of the mediarncontent. The study used uses and gratification as a guiding theoretical framework of the study.rnThe findings show that from the four ethical standards of journalism, lack of clarity was the majorrnproblem observed in the sample health news. This was manifested by the use of medical jargons,rnincomplete information and complexity of contents observed in the analyzed sample health newsrnstories. Sample audiences largely reported dissatisfaction with the EBC Amharic televisions healthrnnews report. The findings also showed that, lack of clarity is the major reason for audiences’rndissatisfaction. Audiences also raised lack of accuracy, impartiality and decency as factors for theirrndissatisfactions with the health news. Thus this study concluded that the major factor for the samplernaudience dissatisfactions with the EBC health news report is the lack of clarity in the content ofrnthe news. The study also concluded that the sample EBC health news lacks to meet the ethics ofrnclarity, accuracy and impartiality in the health news.rnFinally, the researcher has summarized the major findings of the study, and based on the findings,rnforwarded recommendations that might be useful to EBC as the station attempts to present healthrnstories that can meet ethical standards and create a better understanding and gratification for itsrnaudiences.

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