Overseas media, homeland audiences: examining determinants of newsmaking in Deutsche Welle’s Amharic Service

Abstract

Historically, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia’s (FDRE) media environment faced a state apparatus that had been hostile to journalism practice. In particular, government-sponsored intimidation, jailing, and censorship of journalists paralyzed non-state journalistic institutions. With the political establishment’s hostility toward non-state press incapacitating credible journalism internally, foreign-based international and diasporic news outlets have enjoyed considerable following by Ethiopians. In the absence of reliable domestic news sources, Germany’s public international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), alongside the Voice of America, has become arguably the most sought-after source of news in Ethiopia. Through data generated from interviews with newsroom staff, document analysis, and workflow observation, the purpose of this study is to examine newsmaking determinants in DW’s Amharic Service. The study identifies three major factors that influence newsmaking practices at DW Amharic, namely ideological determinants, geographic determinants, and audience-generated determinants. Ideological determinants mainly ascribe to the tensions between the host (Germany) and homeland (Ethiopia), emerging principally from the former’s mission of ‘a democratic export’ and the latter’s resistance to it. Geographic determinants enhanced journalistic safety at the expense of eyewitness reporting and sourcing triangulation. Finally, in engaging with audience-generated determinants, findings reveal how partisan political groups attempt to exert pressure on coverage and the mechanisms the newsroom implemented to navigate externally generated challenges of journalistic autonomy.