Public Trust In The Ethiopian Mainstream Media Addis Ababas Public In Focus

It is argued that trust in media is a necessary condition for trust in other political andrnsocial institutions. Hence, this study attempted to assess Addis Ababa’s public level ofrntrust in the Ethiopian mainstream media; analyze why the public either trust or mistrustrnthe mainstream media; and identify which media—the private or the government inrngeneral —garners trust more and why. To this end, A Multiple Factor Model of Trust inrnNews Media was employed as a theoretical framework.rnA triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methodology was used to conduct thisrnresearch, while quota sampling and accidental sampling which are non-probabilityrnsampling methods were employed to select samples. To gather the necessary data thernresearch employed questionnaire. Questionnaires were administered for 400 (300 ofrnthem were selected for the study) selected participants.rnThe result of the study revealed that only insignificant number of the sample (3.3%)rnpopulation has a “lot of trust” while 44.3 percent said they have “some trust.” Thisrnshows that the majority (50.7%) of the respondents either don’t have trust that much orrnthey never have trust in the country’s mainstream media institutions. The reasonsrnrespondents mentioned for not having a trust in the media include: the media focus onrnissues which are not relevant to the public; the media are either sided with therngovernment or opposition political parties; the media do not report issues truthfully;rnand the media lack journalistic professionalism.rnThe private media were chosen as more trusted than the government owned media byrnmajority (74.5%) of the respondents while 20.1 percent of the participants of the studyrntrusted the government media more. Most of the respondents mentioned that they trust thernprivate media not because of its (own) qualities but because they don’t trust therngovernment media. The research has also found out that Sheger FM is the most trustedrnmedia institution for the majority of the respondents while ETV is the least trusted.

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