View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE Jones B, The lack of listening: News sources in South Africa’s five general elections, 1994–2014. Journalism, 20 (8), pp. 1014-1034. Copyright © The Author 2019. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. provided by Stirling Online Research Repository Original article Corresponding author: Bernadine Jones, Media and Communications, School of Media and Performing Arts, Coventry University, Coventry CV1 5FB, UK. Email:
[email protected] The lack of listening: News sources in South Africa’s five general elections, 1994 – 2014 Bernadine Jones Abstract With most political journalism research focusing on Western elections, one tends to forget that mediatisation exists in non-Western reportage too. Television news is still a powerful political tool, especially in developing democracies and particularly in South Africa – the case of this research. This paper investigates the sources used on television news during five democratic South African elections, 1994 to 2014, and aims to shed light on the type of mediatised political reporting in and about a non-Western country. The main finding of this research is that news sources during the South African elections were made up increasingly of pundits and decreasingly of political leaders and citizens. The importance of “listening” directly cannot be overstated, especially in developing democracies like South Africa. A solid link between journalist and politician as well as journalist and citizen is crucial to implement substantive information necessary to enable the media’s democratic duty. When journalists ignore citizen voices in favour of interpretive and evaluative sources, this link is steadily degraded.