Abstract
D.Litt. et Phil. (Journalism, Film and Television)
This study investigates challenges of establishing a sustainable regulatory system for journalists in order to achieve media accountability to society, with Uganda as a case study. Using in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in media regulation, the study makes an inquiry into the dispute over who, between the media and the state in Uganda, should enforce ethical standards and public media accountability. This dispute became manifest in 1995 when the government of Uganda introduced statutory regulation for journalists, as Ugandan journalists later in 2006 also started a self-regulatory system to run alongside the statutory one. The study also assessed the prevailing ethical and accountability situation in the media in Uganda, including the existence, or absence, of accountability mechanisms in newsrooms. The study is anchored in political economy, critical political economy, normative theory and media accountability theory, and its findings show that there is a clash in the understanding of media roles, notably on the part of political actors and a government whose actions are increasingly becoming authoritarian. However, while the media understand their roles of providing information from the perspective of a liberal democratic framework, media organisations are subject to political and economic pressure that impacts on journalists’ ethical and accountability practices. Thus the pursuit of individual media interests and agendas has further weakened journalists’ collective self-organisation, leading to self-regulation failure. The findings further show that the level of ethical standards and accountability among Ugandan journalists is low, and that internal newsroom mechanisms to enforce them do not exist in many media organisations that are pre-occupied with survival in a repressive political environment, while also in pursuit of economic benefit. The study notes that statutory regulation of journalists in Uganda had failed in spite of having the backing of the law, because it was opposed by the journalists and ignored by the very government that set it up. Furthermore, weak journalism structures, corporate media interests and government high handedness against journalists might have undermined the social responsibility model of self-regulation. The study thus recommends that Uganda adopts the co-regulatory system between the public and the media, which gives power to the...