East African news outlets are young, diverse in ownership and confident in their ability to innovate and deliver high-quality journalism, despite the financial difficulties they have experienced in recent years and efforts to shape their coverage by powerful interests. Such are the findings of The State of Innovation and Media Viability in East Africa, a 72-page report by AKU’s Graduate School of Media and Communications and DW Akademie. The report is based on an in-depth online survey of media managers and journalists from a total of 437 media outlets in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania from 2020 to 2021. More than 800 journalists and nearly 275 managers responded. The responses from within each organization were aggregated to produce a single score, which the report then used for its analyses. Some key findings follow.
Media outlets tend to be young, independently owned and dependent on advertising for revenue: Although most print publications are older, about 60 percent of TV, radio, digital and multimedia outlets are less than 10 years old. About 60 percent of all outlets are independently owned. Advertising is the top revenue source for all sectors of the media save print, for which single-copy sales and paid downloads are the leading source of revenue. Young media firms may be more likely to fail, but may also be more likely to be innovative. The fact that most outlets are independently owned may increase the number of viewpoints to which the public is exposed. Dependence on advertising at a time when news media outlets are losing advertising revenue to new competitors online may endanger their financial viability.
Amid the pandemic, most media outlets expected to survive: Four out of five outlets put their likelihood of survival at 60 percent or higher,despite the fact that the vast majority suffered financially in 2020.
Journalists face intimidation and pressure: Some 13 percent of media outlets in Tanzania, 35 percent in Kenya and 58 percent in Uganda reported their journalists had been arrested or physically assaulted as a result of their work in 2019. Roughly a third of Kenyan outlets and half of Ugandan outlets said they had spiked at least one story due to political or business pressure in 2019. A third of Tanzanian outlets said that in 2019 they had spiked at least one story due to political pressure, and 15 percent said they had done so due to business pressure.
Journalists may lack access to the equipment, technology and training they need: Less than half of organizations agreed or strongly agreed that their journalists have access to needed equipment, technology and training.
Most news outlets believe they are innovative: More than 60 percent of surveyed organizations say they are innovative. The figure is lowest among print-focused organizations (50 percent) and highest among multimedia organizations (71 percent).
News organizations rate themselves fairly highly on several factors that influence the quality of their journalism: On a Likert scale of 1 to 5, with 1 representing the lowest score and 5 the highest, organizations rated their editorial practices a 4.23. They rated both their editorial independence and their ability to provide regular and attractive levels of pay a 3.64.
News organizations rate themselves highly on the diversity of their staff despite the limited number of women in the media: Most organizations agreed or strongly agreed that they have a “diverse staff from different backgrounds including women and marginalized groups.” That is despite what the report’s authors call “well-documented gender disparities in the newsroom.” One- quarter of the managers and one-third of the journalists who responded to the survey were women.