Indigenizing journalistic objectivity in an African context: How ‘indigenous’ journalistic practices (re)define professional norms

Abstract

Through comparative content analysis of online news reports (N = 420), we examined how indigenous values and source citation practices (re)define journalistic objectivity away from the normative comfort domain of ‘The American standard’. We argue that ‘African’ journalistic practices will more possibly reflect more ‘objective’ narratives with a critical gaze to African values such as ‘Ubuntu’ and ‘Afriethics’. By comparing ‘grassroots’ with ‘elite’ source citations as reflected in ‘African’ media reportage, we found that African news narratives that embrace ‘Community Journalism’ reflect more grassroots than elite voices as distinct from ‘Western’ libertarian journalistic practices.