The political landscape of Ethiopian television

Abstract

Credibility and hostility are more closely linked than previous literature has generally recognized and some studies were able to find the inter-connection between the two. This study explicated the reason for the decline of credibility and presence of hostile media phenomenon in the Ethiopian private, regional and federal television channels. Thus, the study applied the qualitative research design with the classical grounded theory for data analysis and development of the conceptual theory. The semi-structured interview was employed to gather the data. The Amhara and Oromia regional states and Addis Ababa city were purposively selected under this study. The selection of these two regional states and the capital city emanated from their influence in the Ethiopian politics in the past and present, their substantial population and some evidence of ongoing attempts at mobilization. The snowball and convenience sampling were applied to select respondents. Purposively Fana television (FBC), Walta television (WT), Ethiopian television (ETV/EBC), Addis Television, Oromia Broadcast Network (OBN), Amhara Television (AMC). The result showed that all the private, regional and federal television channels found to be not credible but the contribution of the regional television channels to the hostile media phenomenon intense than the federal and private television channels.