‘Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place’? A Comparative Study of How Business Journalists Negotiate Ethical Policies in Kenya and South Africa

Abstract

While it is generally understood that business journalism involves a pro-corporate bias, as choices made about the content and framing of financial news are governed by a deliberate wish to portray corporations and their activities in a positive light, very few studies in Africa have examined how reporters and editors negotiate and experience ethical policies in different newsroom habitus. This is particularly important in the context where research elsewhere has demonstrated that there are ethical challenges for business journalists who have access to information and the ability to either influence markets or to gain personally themselves. This chapter sheds light on how business journalists in Kenya and South Africa negotiate ethical frameworks in their daily work. Drawing empirical data from document analysis and in-depth interviews, the chapter argues that the discourse of business journalism ethics is still very much alien to Kenyan and South African newsrooms. Departing from previous studies conducted mostly in Western societies, this study demonstrates that covert and overt pressures from advertisers, shareholders, news sources, and editorial management are militating against the institutionalization of ethical business journalism in African newsrooms. The findings, therefore, question the liberal-pluralist foundations of colonially inspired business journalism in Africa. The chapter thus argues that context-specific challenges negate the lofty ideals of professional autonomy and objectivity associated with liberal journalism. It also contends that given the precarious political and economic conditions under which African journalists operate, brown envelope journalism has become habitualized and institutionalized in the Kenyan newsroom when compared with the South African context. The chapter also reveals that although Kenyan and South African business journalism is relatively ring-fenced from direct government interference, it is not immune to ‘capture’ from other actors within the journalistic field’s value chain, who take advantage of their access to various species of capital in order to shape the newsmaking agenda.