Professionals Concerned about Journalism, Activism Collision in Ethiopia

 Addis Ababa 04/2019  Ethiopia is facing the challenge of collision between journalism and activism, Editor-in-Chief of the online English magazine Addis Standard said.

In an exclusive interview with ENA, Tsedale Lemma stated that the two should never merge as doing so will lead to composing a single story for dual purposes.

The editor insists that journalists should never become political activists. However, they should always do activism work for freedom of expression, for freedom of speech as they should be the ones to advocate.

Despite this, “recent events in Ethiopia are indicative of the rising collision between activism and journalism. The fact that we are free does not mean that we are free to blend the two and produce toxic narratives by distorting people's stories; and it is my belief that we should walk away from this." 

According to her, capacity is not an excuse to turn into activism."I do not want to say lack of capacity in terms of resources and financial resource is a reason to turn into activism.” 

But lack of capacity in terms of separating ones role as a journalist, how neutral s/he should be as a journalist is not related to capacity. “That is lack of knowledge that might drive you to become one," Tsedale stressed.

Journalism and Communication Lecturer at Addis Ababa University, Teshager Shiferaw said the public should distinguish between mainstream media houses from activist media house.

Citing the social media as example, he pointed out that diverse interests are reflected on the forums, but not entirely by professional journalists. Though people claim they are journalists.

"We have (therefore) to clearly distinguish which media houses are professional and which are not; and that is very important,” the scholar stressed.      

Teshager suggested that focus be given to enhancing media literacy across the nation.

Nonetheless, "the role of the media is to facilitate dialogue between diversified groups. This requires one to create or strike balance," the lecturer articulated.

Furthermore, he added that media houses need to strive to bring about common meaning through inclusive and participatory dialogue in their platform.