This article explores the influence of family socialisation on journalistic practice in Ethiopia, a country in transition to democracy that suffers from a persistently authoritarian media system and weak journalistic professionalism. Drawing on Shoemaker and Reese’s pioneering model for assessing the hierarchy of influences on media content, it argues family socialisation is an important but neglected influence that predisposes Ethiopian journalists to adopt dysfunctional newsgathering and reporting practices, prioritise political allegiances ahead of responsibilities to either the public or professional colleagues and wait for state intervention to bring about change in the media system. This argument is empirically grounded in the recent mixed methods research on Ethiopian journalists’ role perceptions and practices. An important task for future research on the sources of influence on journalistic professionalism in repressive media milieus is to investigate the influence of journalistic agency at both the individual and collective levels.
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