The hidden toll and mnemonic cost of crisis reporting: Journalists’ memory,identity,ethnicity and geographic proximity

Abstract

This article interrogates how identity, memory, and proximity shape journalists’ reporting on the ongoing secessionist crisis in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions, as well as Southeastern Nigeria, where reporting on contemporary Biafra issues is shaped by the memory of the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with 10 Anglophone Cameroonian journalists and 10 journalists from Southeastern Nigeria, we note that ethnic/linguistic identities and geographic proximity influence crisis reporting. English-speaking journalists in Cameroon find that their proximity to the Anglophone crisis is a double-edged sword, enabling them to amplify community voices and advocate for equality with on-the-ground details and background knowledge, but also exposing them to threats of violence and censorship. Southeastern Nigerian journalists, who possess sufficient knowledge of the Biafran War, bring personal memory and historical consciousness into their reporting of present-day crises. This article also highlights the advantage of geographic distance in sustaining journalists’ drive to report on crisis-related events. By situating memory, identity, and geographic proximity as both strengths and constraints, this article underscores the tension between expected standards of journalistic neutrality and the enticement to advocacy when issues being reported are directly or indirectly linked to journalists.

Introduction

Crisis reporting is a crucial yet ethically complex research area within journalism studies. Journalists covering crises are often tasked with providing balanced reports. Providing such news reports is challenging because journalists’ interests and identities may influence how they report on events (Gollmitzer, 2023). Scholars (Workneh, 2024; Baresch et al., 2010) argue that these identity-related dynamics may drive journalists to engage in advocacy, especially when reporting on crises affecting their communities or regions, thereby complicating traditional expectations of objectivity in journalism. This article brings a unique perspective into the literature by examining the current crisis in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon and juxtaposing it with crises in Southeast Nigeria, such as kidnapping and unknown gunmen, linked to the Biafran Civil War, which occurred decades ago in Nigeria. This research angle is interesting because it offers a rare longitudinal perspective on how historical narratives and ethnic identities continue to shape contemporary conflict dynamics and journalistic practices. The comparative study allows us to assess how collective memory and regional grievances evolve, shedding light on the enduring impact of contemporary and past conflicts on present-day news reporting in the African context. We paired Cameroon and Southeastern Nigeria in this study to enable us to provide a theoretically informed comparison of crisis reporting under conditions of proximity and memory, rather than to offer a symmetrical country comparison. Both contexts are shaped by protracted conflict, contested authority, and journalists’ close social and geographic embeddedness, while differing in political structures and media systems. This combination allows the analysis to identify how proximity shapes journalistic memory practices across different crisis environments, while avoiding claims of representativeness.

The Anglophone crisis in Cameroon and the lingering discourses surrounding the Biafra Civil War in Nigeria are two prominent conflicts in Central and West Africa, deeply intertwined with issues of ethnic identity, historical trauma, and regional marginalization. The former refers to the ongoing armed conflict in the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest of Cameroon (Beseng et al., 2023), which started in 2016. It highlights long-standing grievances of perceived marginalization of the minority English-speaking population of Cameroon by the francophone majority (Ekah, 2020). The Anglophone question, which had been a peaceful movement under pressure groups, turned into an armed insurgency following failed negotiations between striking English-speaking lawyers and teachers and the government (Ketzmerick, 2023; Musah, 2022). The Biafra case revolves around the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), in which the Southeastern region, due to tensions rooted in ethnic and socio-political disparities with Nigeria (Staunton, 1999), sought to secede and form the independent Republic of Biafra (Daly, 2020).

In setting out to examine how the identity of journalists reporting on these crises influences their framing of related events, we are conscious, as noted in earlier studies, that where the state is directly involved in or perceived as a source of oppression, independent reporting is usually challenging to come by (see Keeble, 2019; Pukallus et al., 2020). But journalists are always expected to play a role in facilitating lasting solutions (Höglund and Schaffer, 2021). However, when journalists are directly connected to what they are expected to report and have had extensive experience, the audience may sometimes question their ability to be fair and balanced. It is worthwhile to understand how journalists from African regions that host and have experienced separatist activities negotiate these tensions, as this is crucial for considering media ethics and practical support for journalists. The complex relationship between journalistic identity and different forms of proximity (geographic, ethnic, linguistic, and ideological) offers insights from these two regions that will contribute to current scholarly discussion.

Consequently, this article is not approached solely through journalistic professional standards or the journalists’ affiliation to specific news outlets, but also through the participants’ (journalists’) experiences, their sense of identity, and how proximity to these experiences shapes their reportage. Within this framework, we set out to answer this research question:

How do personal experience, ethnic identities, and geographic proximities of journalists in these regions shape their coverage and reporting of crises?

The comparative nature of this article provides a broader understanding of the intersection of identity, journalism, collective memory, and conflict reporting in ethnically charged and politically sensitive environments. In this article, we understand identity as journalists’ socially situated sense of self, shaped by professional, ethnic, and cultural affiliations that inform crisis reporting. We use memory to refer to socially mediated and historically embedded knowledge of past conflicts that continues to shape journalistic judgment. Proximity is conceptualized as a multidimensional condition encompassing geographic closeness, cultural affiliation, and mnemonic ties to violence. Together, these concepts provide an integrated framework for examining how journalists’ lived attachments shape the reporting of crises.

Through a comparative interview-based methodology (Lichtman, 2013; Jordan et al., 2011) and the thematic qualitative analysis of the interview transcripts, we uncovered the challenges, biases, and ethical dilemmas that arise when journalists cover and report on conflicts that directly affect their communities while also considering their proximity to these crises. We captured these challenges in these two themes: Linguistic and ethnic affiliation as drivers,” and “Geographic and mnemonic proximities in crises reporting”. Through these themes, we highlight the challenges facing journalists from the Anglophone regions of Cameroon and Southeast Nigeria. Also, it contributes to and expands our understanding of the evolving role of journalism in zones of identity-based crises. Further, we affirm the importance of context sensitive approaches to media research; approaches that recognize the inextricable link between the personal and the professional, the local and the global, in the practice of journalism. However, before we foray into discussing these themes, we will discuss the literature on journalism and conflict studies.

Journalism and conflict studies: Contexts from Cameroon’s Anglophone regions and Southeast Nigeria

The Anglophone crisis in Cameroon, which erupted in 2016 as a result of grievances over perceived marginalization, can be said to have been shaped by armed confrontation as well as competing narratives within traditional and digital media. Although the subject can still be considered nascent in scholarly works, research so far has focused on how both mainstream media and social media actors (journalists, activists, state institutions, and ordinary citizens) have framed the crisis or mobilized support. Government-owned and private media divergence in reporting on the crisis has also been a subject of interest to researchers. Kunock (2023), comparing framing on state-owned media and social media notes that the government-owned media highlighted frames of “unity in diversity” and “Cameroon as one and indivisible,” presenting the government’s perspective, while Anglophone activists used social media to expose historical grievances, such as the dismantling of the 1961 federal structure, linguistic and administrative marginalization as well as underrepresentation. Public media, in aligning with the stance of the government, have tended to portray Anglophone activists as criminals threatening the nation, while private media, in their reporting, have focused on conflict, loss of life, and political accountability, while criticizing government inaction (Forcha, 2021; Tabe and Fieze, 2018). Despite some marked discrepancies in focus, Fai and Stubbs (2023) still found that both private and public media leaned towards emphasizing possible resolutions.

Another subject of growing interest to researchers of media coverage of the Anglophone crisis is the role of social media. Social media has emerged with mixed effects. Unreported stories of violence, displacement, human rights abuses, and trauma, otherwise sidelined in traditional media reporting, are captured through social media (Human Rights Watch, 2020). Their ability to bypass state control, common with legacy media, gave the crisis some global visibility. Citizen journalists also leveraged social media and, in some cases, became competitors with mainstream media in the day-to-day reporting of the Anglophone crisis (Nfor, 2024; Ngangum, 2023). At the same time, Nounkeu (2020) identifies critical weaknesses, particularly in the credibility of Facebook news reports, where many articles lacked sources, contextual details, or verifiable information. Other scholars (see Budi, 2021; Njoya, 2024) note that social media at one point became weaponized to spread propaganda and recruit sympathizers, while counter-activists, siding with the government, endeavored to provide alternative perspectives. Online media platforms were thus considered the battlefront in digital warfare for discursive dominance between users who could be described as pro-separatist and pro-government cyber fighters.

In Southeastern Nigeria, the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), commonly known as the Biafran War, has left lasting legacies, especially for the people of present-day Southeastern Nigeria (Achebe, 2012). A growing body of literature examines how post-war narratives, propaganda practices, and media controls continue to shape the region’s journalistic norms, editorial strategies, and public discourse. Folayan et al. (2021) critically examine how propaganda techniques and narrative “spins” employed during the Civil War have persisted into post-war journalism. Through a content analysis of prominent national newspapers (Nigerian Tribune, Daily Trust, Sun), Folayan and colleagues (2021) show that wartime slogans, such as “Go On With One Nigeria” and “On Aburi We Stand”, have transformed into contemporary narratives focused on marginalization and restructuring. These enduring rhetorical forms reveal how journalists struggle with ethical imperatives for balance and fairness when covering sensitive socio-political challenges, such as what observers describe as the heinous activities of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) (Asekhamhe et al., 2022; Chime-Nganya et al., 2017). This crisis is rooted in war memory and ethnic identity (Abada et al., 2020).

Other scholars (Ifeanyichukwu and Hoffman, 2025) also note strong identity and conflict frames that dominate reporting on Southeast separatist movements, including IPOB. Folayan et al. (2021) highlight how the media frequently adopts government-provided frames, portraying IPOB as “armed agitators,” “separatists,” or “terrorists,” without independent verification. This tendency raises ongoing ethical concerns; journalists rely on conflictual, dehumanizing labels that reflect enduring war-era binaries and suppress more nuanced, peace-oriented narratives. The Biafran War also led to the creation of unique media institutions, such as Radio Biafra, which operated as a propaganda tool under secessionist control (Ugochukwu, 2010). Though the station’s wartime operations are well documented, less has been written about how later radio’s wartime legacy shaped journalistic practices in Southeast Nigeria. According to Ugochukwu (2010), the culture of broadcast control and messaging established then continues to influence radio news and public sentiment during episodes of regional crisis (e.g., IPOB mobilization). This suggests a continuity in how Southeast audiences receive and trust radio reportage, rooted in wartime communication patterns. Although not journalism-focused per se, Ugwueze (2019) offers an insightful analysis of how the trauma of the Biafran War persists within Igbo communities and fuels ongoing secessionist sentiments.

While studies continue to explore social media’s role in current separatist mobilization in Southeast Nigeria (Chiluwa, 2018; Ifeanyichukwu and Hoffman 2025; Obiukwu and Njoku, 2024), post-Biafra civil war, its application to journalism in Southeast Nigeria remains instructive. Studies indicate that social media platforms are contested sites (Udenze, 2024; Uwalaka and Nwala, 2023), even on the topic of Biafra (Ifeanyichukwu and Hoffman, 2025; Nweke, 2024); they enable rapid circulation of war-referencing content, yet are also subject to government censorship, e.g., the nationwide Twitter ban following a politically charged presidential post that evoked memories of the Civil War (Erezi, 2021). This environment creates a paradox: social media is a vital channel for covering memory-laden topics such as the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War, yet also a precarious site constrained by state power. Although not strictly journalistic, expunging History from the educational curriculum in Nigeria continues to limit the Biafra discourse (Hood, 2021). The war remains a topic wrapped in mystery and often avoided in public discussion (Adichie, 2014). This ambient silence complicates journalists’ ability to report on and contextualize the impact of conflict, especially for younger generations with attenuated collective memory and secessionist movements.

Journalists and reporting of secessionist movements

Reporting on secessionist movements has historically proven an arduous task for journalists, as they pose complex challenges for both states and the media (see Crawford 2012; Miro 2019; Okeke et al., 2019). Journalists from states that experience separatist pressure are usually faced with several questions ranging from historical background and memory, identity, proximity and bias. Tarasov (2025) suggests that media in separatist regions tend to report events with pro-regional bias, thereby influencing the discourse and perception of issues that citizens talk about. Questions of ethics become all the more important for such journalists. Journalists and media representations of secessionist movements have been said to play an important role in shaping public discourse (Pérez-Boquete and Bello, 2023; Wogu and Egwu, 2019), the way states respond, and the policies enacted about them (Butt, 2017). Scholars (e.g. Dekavalla, 2016; Isiaka, 2024) highlight how media reporting of secession, whether they are considered legitimate struggles for self-determination or threats to national sovereignty, sway public opinion and decision in significant ways. Journalists might sometimes not be seen as neutral actors but as people embedded within the same sociopolitical contexts they report on, which becomes even more pronounced when they are natives of the contested regions (Hanitzsch, 2017).

The proximity of journalists to the events that they report has been a subject of interest to scholars of journalism and media studies, as researchers seem to agree that sociopolitical, economic, cultural/ethnic contexts shape journalists’ professional identity and values (see Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017; Kotišová, 2020; Pintak, 2014). Kreiss (2019) notes that journalists’ social identity can be viewed within the context of specific societies, history and political realities. For instance, the resurgence of secessionist ideologies has led to violence both in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon and in North-Eastern Nigeria (Iyare and Essomba, 2017). Although some international reporting has been carried out about both movements, day-to-day reportage has been done by local journalists (Nfor, 2024), and many of them share close ethnic, linguistic, or regional proximities with the populations demanding autonomy (Fai et al., 2024).

This proximity involves complex frameworks that journalists from these regions need to navigate. Consequently, Tuchman (1978) opines that journalists draw from experiences to construct stories and identities. Journalists reporting events close to them find that their geographic, ideological, cultural and emotional proximity presents some advantages, ranging from easy access and trust among their own people, but they might also be challenged by ethical tensions when we consider impartiality and detachment from the subjects they cover (Huxford 2007; Jenkins and Nielsen 2020; Splendore and Curini 2020). Allan and Zelizer (2004) talk about the reality of bearing witness, as journalists may sometimes feel compelled to focus on the stories that directly concern them and report in a way that favors a specific stance at the expense of traditional objectivity and balance. In other words, this is tied to journalistic role theory. It indicates how proximity reshapes role enactment, as journalists positioned within crises oscillate between acting as witnesses, interpreters, and, at times, advocates (Zelizer, 1993; Mellado, 2021; Hanitzsch, 2007). Rather than signaling professional deviation, these shifts reflect situated negotiations of journalistic identity under conditions of moral urgency, risk, and shared community belonging, extending role theory to contexts of embedded crisis reporting.

Familiarity with the terrain, easy access to sources, and scenes of events are some of the advantages that journalists reporting from geographic proximity enjoy (Hahn and Lönnendonker, 2009). Given this proximity, emotional involvement is likely to be a threat. When journalists share cultural and/or ethnic ties with actors, they find that they begin to adopt frames that favor such movements in their reporting (Cottle, 2000; Braun and Clarke, 2021). Studies carried out in Catalonia (Tobeña, 2017), Quebec (Demers and Cam, 2006), and the Balkans (Thompson, 2019) suggest that journalists are likely to struggle between loyalty to a local ideology and their commitment to uphold outlined journalistic standards. It is therefore possible to say that cultural proximity can enhance the depth of journalistic narratives but can also challenge neutrality. Perales-García et al. (2022), studying media reporting of the Catalan movement, noted that when reporting separatist issues, international media tend to focus on official government statements while neglecting the key issues that the secessionist movements demand.

The role of language in reporting and framing information cannot be overemphasized. Scholars (e.g. Abrajano et al., 2025; Bourdieu, 1991) have noted that language plays a crucial role in the process of legitimizing political claims. Audiences are said to trust journalists and media that report in their local languages (Sajjad et al., 2018) and therefore feel free to share information with reporters who share their linguistic background. It is challenging to discuss journalists’ ideological neutrality because, however they report, they are likely to be seen as mirroring or resisting dominant local narratives (see Deuze 2005; Nair and Sharma 2015). As Hanitzsch (2007) posited, there is a distinction between “detached watchdogs” and “committed participants” in considering journalism cultures. Global norms of objectivity and balance, in some instances, differ from local expectations of advocacy when journalists are seen as betraying their communities of origin or being too sympathetic (Plaisance, 2021). The difficult balance between trust and suspicion makes journalism practice in such contexts particularly fraught with challenges.

Research methodology

As stated earlier, we employed the qualitative research design: the comparative interview-based approach, a method that enables us to conduct interviews across different groups, cases, or contexts to explore and compare specific themes, experiences, or viewpoints (Lichtman, 2013; Jordan et al., 2011). We conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 purposively selected Anglophone journalists from Cameroon and 10 journalists from Southeast Nigeria. In the qualitative design we adopted in this study, we prioritized depth of the interviews and not necessarily very high numbers. In fact, several journalists contacted felt reluctant to talk about the issue. Going in depth with the few who accepted our request permitted us to effectively identify prevailing patterns.

In our purposive sampling, we targeted Cameroonian English-speaking journalists who have been reporting on the Anglophone crisis since it erupted in 2016 and later escalated into an armed conflict. They included both male and female journalists from public and private, mainstream media, based in the cities of Douala and Yaoundé, major news hubs in the country, but who have family and deep connections to the Anglophone regions. We also considered the longevity of the practice of these journalists to examine how this could affect their reporting of the crisis. The 10 Southeastern Nigerian journalists were precisely from and reside in Anambra, Enugu, and Ebonyi States of Nigeria. These journalists were purposely selected because they are indigenes of these regions. The 10 journalists are all from the Southeastern region of Nigeria and are all Igbos. They are second-generation millennials who did not witness the Biafran War firsthand. They share geographic proximities with the region in terms of work, experience, and memory of the Biafra War. Besides, they have significant experience covering and reporting on topics related to the Biafran Civil War. These journalists work for legacy media and are also active on various social media platforms.

The journalists’ experiences yield exceptionally rich qualitative data, given their characteristics, which fit this research. To substantiate this assertion, we draw on Malterud et al.'s (2016) concept of information power, which was assessed through the specificity of the study aim, the experiential relevance of participants, the quality of interview dialogue, and the use of established theory. We designed the interviews to elicit insights into how the journalists’ identities, geographic locations, and lived experiences shape their reporting of the conflicts. We posed the following core questions, giving room for follow-up and probes as necessary: Could you describe how your ethnic identity influenced your coverage of the Anglophone Crisis? What is your opinion about the challenge of kidnapping and the activities of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) in the Southeast region? How do you navigate the tension between professional objectivity and personal or collective memory in the crisis? Could you explain how your geographic proximity to the conflict zones shapes your perspective and the narratives you craft in your news reports? How do you deal with the socio-political pressures exerted by the state, and how does this affect your ability to report freely on issues surrounding the topic? It is pertinent to point out that we reached conceptual sufficiency when additional interviews no longer generated new analytical insights but reinforced existing themes, indicating adequate information power for the study’s aims.

In this study, our positionality is shaped by social and experiential proximity to the conflicts examined, affording contextual insight while necessitating reflexive attention to potential bias. To mitigate bias, the semi-structured interviews prioritized participants’ narratives. We employed reflexive memoing throughout the analysis. Besides, our thematic coding focused on patterns across accounts rather than individual cases. Disconfirming evidence was actively retained to avoid narrative closure. These measures support analytical transparency while treating proximity as an epistemic resource rather than an unexamined limitation.

We conducted interviews at the convenience of the interlocutors. All the interviews were carried out online through recorded phone calls, WhatsApp, and Zoom. Due to the sensitive nature of the data, the interviews were transcribed manually and stored in protected university systems. The transcribed data were uploaded to ATLAS. ti software. We carried out an inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2021) blended with Benson’s (2018) narrative analytical approach of categorizing narratives into patterns and themes. An initial reading facilitated a general understanding of the data. The data was read, and patterns from the transcripts were used to generate initial codes, which were attributed to data excerpts. We merged identical codes, and those that did not fit the study’s context were eliminated. The codes were later categorized into themes. It is from these processes that we finally arrived at two themes: “Linguistic and ethnic affiliation as drivers”, and “Geographic and mnemonic proximities in crises reporting”. It is important to mention that we used the inductive thematic analysis approach to identify patterns across cases, while the narrative analysis technique explored how participants structured their accounts and made meaning of proximity and crisis over time. This approach draws on established cited works above, which enables both cross-case comparison and attention to situated storytelling.

This study received institutional ethical approval, and all participants provided informed consent with assurances of confidentiality and anonymity. To protect the identities and privacy of the journalist, we removed their personal details from the article, and some excerpts from the data were pseudonymized. The discussion of the results presented in the next sections is based on the ensuing analysis of the data.

Linguistic and ethnic affiliation as drivers

Our results indicate that both groups of journalists reported that their ethnic identities deeply influenced their understanding of and engagement with the conflicts. The journalists from Southeastern Nigeria expressed a strong ethnic and cultural connection to reporting crises in the region, often citing familial histories and the collective memory of the Igbo people’s suffering during the Biafran War. For instance, a mid-career broadcast journalist narrates: I am Igbo and my experience of what happened during the war, and as we read in the media, is a great push on how I write and interpret crisis stories in Anambra state (a state in the Southeast). An early career print reporter in the region put their opinion thus: the kidnapping and unknown gunmen crises in our area we write about today did not just fall from the sky, our ethnic group suffered a lot of damage because of the war in the 1960s and early 70s. These narratives shape their reporting, highlighting the Igbo grievances and the long-term impacts of the war on the region’s socio-political landscape. An early-career freelance journalist based in Enugu corroborates the view of the young journalist from the print media. He says, personally, my family lost so many properties to the war, both the ones we had in the old Eastern region, Port Harcourt, and in the North… so we really need to ask more profound questions why some people engage in some of the illegal activities they engage in in the Southeast, like armed robbery and the like.

Similarly, the findings suggest that ethnic/linguistic identity shapes how the Anglophone Cameroonian journalists perceive and frame the conflict. These Anglophone journalists see themselves as part of the conflict, which affects their ability to be balanced in reporting. Many of them reported feeling a sense of duty to give a voice to the Anglophone population’s struggles and highlight the human rights abuses experienced by their community. A mid-career television news reporter based in Douala (a Francophone city) described it in these terms: it becomes challenging when it touches you. Imagine having to write a report about your uncle who was kidnapped, or about your cousins in a village who got shot. As an anglophone reporter, it is going to be worse because you’re going to express your emotions.

This sense of responsibility, however, frequently clashes with expectations of neutrality or the promotion of a unified national identity. An English-language Yaoundé (Francophone city) news anchor stated: Every anglophone who is in Douala has a family member in the Northwest or Southwest. We are not only reporters, we are also reporting like victims. And you can imagine the victim recounting his or her story to you…they put a lot of passion into it. A field reporter based in the Anglophone Southwest stressed that Anglophone reporters put their “anglophoness” into their reporting and generally feel that they are the voices of the people and have the challenge of detaching themselves from the news. An online news publisher expressed it thus: we fight back, not by taking up arms against the government, but by telling the truth and getting to the root causes. The implications here suggest that language and ethnic identity may create ethical dilemmas for journalists in conflict settings, balancing between professional impartiality and personal or community advocacy.

This result suggests that historical memory among journalists, particularly those from conflict-affected communities, does not function as a passive repository of the past but as an active repository that constitutes forces that shape their professional ethos and sense of responsibility. Drawing on Halbwachs’ (1925) concept of collective memory, and related work on memory and journalism (Kitch, 2008; Olick, 2014; Zelizer and Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2014), memory operates as a socially mediated resource that informs how journalists interpret events, frame narratives, and position themselves vis-à-vis broader struggles for recognition and justice. Furthermore, understanding this process through the lens of mnemonic labor highlights the emotional and cognitive work involved in sustaining and transmitting memory within journalistic practice. In this context, journalists’ engagement with historical memory is a conduit for knowledge production and a vehicle for contesting hegemonic narratives, reinforcing the interrelation between personal experience, professional duty, and socio-political accountability.

Geographic and mnemonic proximities in crisis reporting

Furthermore, from the dataset, we see that the geographic proximity to the conflict zones plays a crucial role in shaping the journalists’ perspectives and the content of their reports. The study reveals that geographic proximity to the crisis significantly influences how news is reported. Anglophone journalists based in the conflict regions of the Northwest and Southwest tend to provide more detailed reports based on first-hand experiences. A Douala-based newspaper reporter who collaborates with journalists from the Anglophone regions stated: They are on the ground, they see things first-hand. So they are in a better place to recount things the way they see them. Sometimes their reporting has been emotionally charged, reflecting the intense personal and community-level impact of the violence and the urgency with which they want an end to the crisis. But safety considerations make them tone down. In contrast, journalists outside the conflict zones, particularly those in urban centers, although physically absent from these regions and not having the possibility to be first-hand witnesses of some events, feel safer reporting on some of the events that those on the ground might not be able to report. Their ideological and historical proximity, therefore, plays a role in their bold reporting. A Yaoundé-based reporter stated: I’m an Anglophone… who has regularly reported on the crisis for both local and international media outlets. So maybe I’m not really scared of immediate repercussions from the separatists because I am based in the francophone regions. An English language media proprietor revealed that, although based in the French-speaking regions, information about the crisis is at the top of their news selection: When we are doing editorial selection, as an Anglophone media organ, we give priority to the Anglophone crisis. The main headline is on the Anglophone crisis.

Conversely, the journalists in Southeastern Nigeria, while not directly experiencing the violence of the Biafra War today, still feel a close connection to the legacy of the conflict due to their geographic, cultural and mnemonic ties to the region. The interview data point that their reports often emphasize the long-term impacts of the war, such as economic marginalization and regional underdevelopment, which remain pertinent issues in contemporary Nigerian politics. A print media editor from Abia state in the Southeast region avers: it is my duty to make sure that my people get the attention they deserve, especially from the federal government. Another participant further says: The neglect and marginalization are too much…since after the war, the infrastructural development on this side has been slow; yes, I owe a duty to write stories about it. For these Nigerian journalists, these experiences constitute concealed burdens and reflect the mnemonic costs of practising journalism in regions marked by political volatility. These hidden pressures align with broader discussions of precarity and affective labor, as journalists must continuously negotiate the emotional, psychological, and material risks embedded in their work. Practising journalism in such contexts thus extends beyond professional routines to encompass a form of risk culture, which entails navigating threats and vulnerabilities and becomes integral to identity, survival, and knowledge production. However, the challenges of the aftermath of the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War remain largely unacknowledged in public discourse (Ifeanyichukwu and Hoffman, 2025), even in journalism in Nigeria. As a journalist from Anambra state puts it: Workers (journalists) in the Southeast region are supposed to have a forum where we discuss the challenges we face because of the civil war.

We argue that geographic proximity of journalists and their mnemonic ties with a certain region are key interpretative tools that help journalists contextualize contemporary issues in the broader context of historic conflicts. In line with arguments outlined in the theory of journalistic role (Mellado, 2021; Hanitzsch, 2007; Zelizer, 1993), such connections determine how journalists conceptualize their professional obligations, situating and reporting contemporary events not just as isolated occurrences but as part of ongoing socio-political processes. In doing so, journalists present their audience with a more nuanced, longitudinal view of complex challenges that focus on the enduring role of historic conflicts for contemporary socio-politics. This approach underscores how professional norms and their embedding in specific historical and geographic environments define the roles of journalists.

Journalists’ physical distance from conflict zones might limit their immediate access to information, but their linguistic and ethnic proximity urges them to leverage their distance to their advantage. Because of mitigated threats to their safety as compared to those at the epicenter of the crisis, they are able to disseminate information about the crisis to broader audiences. Anglophone journalists based in other regions and abroad, though physically absent, hold a significant geographic advantage. This ranges from physical safety to more access to diverse sources, such as civil society actors and international organizations. Unlike Swiss journalists studied by Sacco and Bossio (2015), whose main challenge in reporting crises from a distance is the availability of trusted sources in terms of verifiable first-hand accounts, Cameroonian journalists benefit from the cooperation of on-the-ground reporters and citizen journalists looking for an avenue to disseminate their information about the crisis (Nfor, 2024). Additionally, geographic distance enabled reporters based in less volatile environments or abroad to leverage digital tools and internet connectivity, which were unavailable in the Anglophone regions at one point (Ngangum, 2023).

Overall, these results highlight journalists’ role performance, particularly as witnesses, interpreters, and occasional advocates. Participants’ accounts suggest that proximity to crisis complicates conventional role boundaries, as journalists document events while interpreting them through lived experiences and, at times, engaging in advocacy. Consequently, identity, memory, and proximity shape role enactment not as professional deviation but as situated negotiations of journalistic norms under conditions of risk, moral urgency, and shared community belonging. In foregrounding these dynamics, the results extend role theory by demonstrating how journalistic roles are reconfigured in contexts of sustained crisis and embedded reporting.

In addition, this article advances scholarship on crisis reporting by theorizing proximity as a mnemonic condition. It demonstrates how journalists’ closeness to conflict shapes what is remembered, archived, or rendered ephemeral in news production. Rather than treating memory as a by-product of reporting, the results suggest that it is actively constituted through situated journalistic practices, producing uneven and contested archives of crisis. These insights carry important implications for journalism policy and training. Journalism education could incorporate reflexive engagement with proximity and memory to help journalists critically assess how positionality shapes narrative durability. Further, news organisations might develop clearer editorial guidelines for archiving crisis content, particularly digital and ephemeral materials, to prevent the loss or distortion of historically significant reporting. Ethically, the findings suggest moving beyond abstract neutrality toward context-sensitive standards that acknowledge embeddedness while maintaining accountability, accuracy, and care for affected communities. Additionally, policies that support the mental well-being and ethical fortitude of journalists in conflict zones, who often face high personal risks and moral dilemmas, would enhance the resilience and integrity of conflict reporting.

Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to examine the role played by linguistic and ethnic identity in journalists’ reporting of crises in Cameroon and Nigeria. The focus was on Anglophone journalists reporting on the Cameroon Anglophone crisis and the journalists from Southeastern Nigeria reporting on contemporary issues directly or indirectly connected to the Nigerian Civil War. We note that journalists covering issues about the Anglophone crisis and contemporary Biafra issues share a common struggle in negotiating their professional identity with their personal ties to the conflicts. True as it may be that they strive for journalistic objectivity, ethnic, linguistic, and regional affiliations continue to shape their perception. Journalists in these contexts find it “incredibly difficult to separate the human, emotional experience from the rational, analytical perspective required by their professional identity.” (Kotišová, 2020: 1723) They see their reporting not only as a duty to inform audiences about salient issues but also as a form of advocacy, as they highlight marginalization and call for better consideration of the issues. Both Anglophone journalists and journalists from Southeastern Nigeria consider that their identity and proximity provide them with deeper insight into the social and historical context of the issues. This is notwithstanding the possibility that such attachments may blur the lines between balanced and advocacy-driven reporting.

Some earlier research has shown that geographic proximity is propitious to the work of journalists covering events in general and crises in particular (Mollerup and Mortensen, 2018; Thompson, 2019). Through this study, we were able to establish a similar pattern, expanding the scholarship through the lens of memory. Just like Anglophone journalists residing in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions, Nigerian journalists residing in the Southeast are able to report and analyze related issues with more facts and details. Additionally, this study highlights a layer to the discussion of geographic proximity, noting the edge of geographic distance in effectively reporting a political crisis. Cameroonian Anglophone journalists based outside the conflict zones or abroad are able to leverage their distance to bypass censorship and physical threats, allowing for more sustained reporting that resonated locally and internationally. Similarly, Southeastern Nigerian journalists with detailed background knowledge of the civil war anchor their reporting on memory, stories of pain, and marginalization. Even when reporting far from present-day conflict zones, their lived experiences shape their narratives, and they can produce detailed, critical reports while avoiding immediate danger on the ground. While this study is limited to both countries, its results may be implemented in similar settings. Future studies could explore media content to see how the identity of journalists from these regions affects their output. Further research could also examine perspectives from other countries through other research methods. This article brings the needed perspective from the global majority region to journalism studies, contributing to how journalists’ experiences and memory can influence their reporting of crises.