View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by South East Academic Libraries System (SEALS) AN INVESTIGATION OF THE ROLE OF NEWS VALUES IN THE SELECTION OF NEWS SOURCES IN A CONTEMPORARY THIRD WORLD NEWSPAPER: A CASE STUDY OF THE DAILY NATION NEWSPAPER. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of a Masters of Arts Degree in Journalism and Media Studies of RHODES UNIVERSITY by Connie Syomiti Kisuke July 2004 Professor Guy Berger (Supervisor) DEDICATION To Kisuke, Ndiku, Kasui and Katunge i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I give glory to the Lord Jesus Christ my Saviour whose love and word of promise steered and sustained me throughout the time of my study and the writing of this thesis. Without His grace, help and strength, this work would have been impossible. I am indebted to my supervisor Professor Guy Berger. Your support, guidance and attention throughout the course of this rather challenging study made it doable. Thank you for believing in my abilities and for telling me that “writing a thesis is like climbing a tall mountain, but I am prepared to climb it with you”, and you did. Sincere thanks to all the journalists and editors at the Daily Nation newspaper who so graciously gave their time to answer my questions and shared their practical experiences with me. They allowed me to observe them at work and provided pleasant conditions for my research. Without them this thesis could not have been written. Many thanks to Mweru, my research mentor and friend, for all the time sacrificed to listen and share insights and to give helpful suggestions. I wish to thank all my friends who gave me the needed moral support and encouragement during my time at Rhodes, especially Rose, Babara, Joyce, Undjee, Zena, Nomfundo, Teddy, Priscilla, and my community cell group in His People church, Grahamstown. It gives me a lot of pleasure to acknowledge my debt to my husband and best friend, Kisuke, and our children, Ndiku, Kasui and Katunge, for their patience, love and encouragement. Your constant communication and unceasing prayers for me kept me going even when I should have given up. God bless you indeed. Last but not least, I wish to sincerely thank my beloved dad, Joseph Kilila, for instilling in me the value of education. ii FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE The financial assistance from Belgium Government Scholarship towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to Rhodes University or the donor. iii ABSTRACT News in our contemporary newspapers has come to be associated more and more with what the elites do and say. Both their deeds and misdeeds are treated as newsworthy events and in the process they become newsmakers, both actors and sources of news. Even when they are not directly involved in news events they are sought out by journalists to validate those events and to interpret the social reality to the readers as news sources. This study is about the selection of news sources in the Daily Nation, a contemporary, independent newspaper based in Nairobi, Kenya. In this study, I set out to unravel the complex processes that underlie newsmaking and source selection. This study is informed by the theory of news values and the paradigm of the role of media in democracy. Based on qualitative interviews, observations and content analysis of the front-page stories, it investigates the process of news and source selection in front-page stories. Through these approaches, I established that news values are significant criteria that inform journalists in both the selection of front-page news stories and the sources of these stories. I also established that social values of the society in which this newspaper operates are heavily embedded in the news. For example, the journalists preferred male politicians as sources of news in the front- page stories to women, and the elites to ordinary people, and this reflected on the social structures and cultural norms that are prevalent in this society. This study, further, established that the news values of this newspaper share commonly with the Western news media in terms of journalistic conventions and ways of interpreting the social reality in the news. Ideally, the newspaper embraces the principles of democracy in news reporting, but in practice it does not satisfactorily adhere to the full requirements of its democratic role in terms of source selection. The democratic principles in news reporting require, among other things, that the newspaper should allow a diversity of views in the news, representing various groups that are found in real society including the elites, non- elites, women, ordinary people and minorities. In the case of the Daily Nation, a tiny group of elite male professional politicians made up the largest majority of its front- page news sources. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication…………………………………………………………………………...i Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….....ii Financial assistance…………………………………………………………………iii Abstract……………………………………………………………………………...iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………v Chapter One: Introduction 1.0.Context of the study……………………………….……………………………..1 1.1. News and source selection……………………….……………………………...1 1.2. Research Methods……………………………….………………………………3 1.3. The democratic paradigm of news reporting..…………………………………...7 1.4. Study approach………………………………………………………………….10 1.5. Goals of the study…………………………………………………………….…11 1.6. Research context…………………………………………………………………12 1.7. Thesis outline……………………………………………………………………13 Chapter Two: Theoretical Framework and Literature Review 2.0. Introduction…..………………………………………………………………….14 2.1. An overview of the theory of news values..……………………………………..15 2.2. Journalism and professional understanding of news values...……………….…..19 2.3. News values and the selection of news sources……..……………………….….21 2.4. Significance of front-page stories in relation to news values..……………….….22 2.5. News sources and their relationship to news values.…………………………....23 2.6. Elitism in news values and news sources..……………………………………....28 2.7. Conclusion..……………………………………………………………………...28 Chapter Three: Research Methodology 3.0. Introduction..…………………………………….……………………………….30 3.1. Research Design..………………………………………………………………..30 3.2. Methods of data collection..……………………………………………………..32 3.2.1. Qualitative methods..………….……………………………………………….33 3.2.1. (a). Semi-structured interviews..………………………………………………33 3.2.1. (b). Observations..……………………………………………………………..35 3.2.2. Quantitative technique..……………………………………………………….37 3.3. Population of study..…………………………………………………………….38 3.4. Sample selection..……………………………………………………………….38 3.5. Data collection procedure..……………………………………………………...39 3.6. Data processing and analysis...…………………………………………………..41 3.7. Limitations to the study...………………………………………………………..41 3.8. Conclusion...……………………………………………………………………..44 Chapter Four: Content Analysis of the News Sources found in the Front-page Stories 4.0. Introduction..…………………………………………………………………….45 4.1. Scope of study and coding frame..………………………………………………46 4.4.1. Scope of study..………………………………………………………………..46 4.1.2. The coding frame...…………………………………………………………….46 4.2. Typification of news and categorization of news sources...……………………..47 4.2.1. Types of news...………………………………………………………………..47 v 4.2.1 (a). Social, political and economic news..……………………………………..48 4.2.1 (b). Hierarchical status of news..………………………………………………49 4.2.2. Status of news sources..……………………………………………………….50 4.3. Summary of key findings..………………………………………………………52 4.3.1. What type of news sources are found in the front-page stories?........................52 4.3.1 (a).What gender is more privileged in the front-page stories?............................52 4.3.1 (b).What status of news sources is privileged?...................................................53 4.4. News sources found in different types of news..………………………………..53 4.4.1. News sources according to thematic news types..…………………………….54 4.4.1 (a). News sources in economic news..…………………………………………54 4.4.1 (b). News sources in political news..…………………………………………..54 4.4.1 (c). News sources in social new....……………………………………………..55 4.4.2. News sources according to hierarchical status of news types...……………….55 4.5. Conclusion...……………………………………………………………………..57 Chapter Five: Findings and Interpretations on the Selection of Front-page Stories 5.0. Introduction...……………………………………………………………………59 5.1. Background to the study..……………………………………………………….59 5.2. The process of selecting front-page stories...……………………………………62 5.3. Selecting the “big story” in the Daily Nation..………………………………………66 5.4. Qualifying stories as big and important..………………………………………..71 5.5.Stories on page one resonate..…………………………………………………....77 5.6.News of national importance and issues in the news..…………………………...78 5.7.Politics and economics are news of national importance..…………………….....82 5.8.Conclusion..………………………………………………………………………88 Chapter Six: Findings and Interpretations on Selecting News Sources for the Front-page Stories 6.0. Introduction.………………………………………………………………….….89 6.1. The highlights in selecting news sources.…………………………………….....90 6.2. Sources have a recognizable name..……………………………………………..93 6.3. Newsworthy attributes of a news source..…………………………………….....96 6.4. Personalities that resonate with readers..………………………………………...97 6.5. Role of a source in society and representation in the news…………………….101 6.6. Particular personalities drive the news agenda by their action or lack of it……102 6.7. Elite