Media in Ethiopia

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The media landscape in Ethiopia consists of radio and television , which are primarily under the control of the Ethiopian government , as well as private newspapers and magazines .

Compared to the length of Ethiopia's 2000 year history as an independent nation, the history of the media in Ethiopia is a very timely phenomenon.

Media landscape

Ten radio stations, eight of them AM and two shortwave transmitters, are licensed to operate in Ethiopia. The main radio stations include Radio Ethiopia , Radio Fana (or Torch , a private station), Radio Voice of the One Free Ethiopia and the Voice of the Tigray Revolution . The only television broadcasting network is ETV , which broadcasts 24 hours and is divided into three regional stations - Addis TV , TV Oromiyaa (with two live studios) and Dire TV . In order to maintain the national consensus and not to discriminate against minority groups, the radio stations broadcast in the numerous languages ​​of the country.

Due to the high poverty rate , the resulting low literacy rate and the low distribution outside the capital, print media can only be offered to a small percentage of the population. The lack of circulation is reflected in the scarcity of diversity from the official press. Since the end of the Ethiopian Civil War , private newspapers and magazines began to appear; this sector of the media market is starting to grow - despite the stubborn regulation on the part of the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the ebb and flow of the Ethiopian economy . Although the current government is increasing the pressure on the media at home, the increasingly affluent and cosmopolitan Ethiopian diaspora helped litigate the free press in Ethiopia and provided the numerous extranational communities with news services (both online and offline) in the Amharic language .

Ethiopia Newspapers

Media freedom

When the Revolutionary Democratic Front of the Ethiopian Peoples (EPRDF) came to power after the Ethiopian Civil War in 1991, it was one of the first acts to give the Ethiopian media far more freedom than it had ever experienced; it ended the years of censorship that ruled under the Derg regime and the government of the Abyssinian Empire . Despite these liberalization measures, the relationship between the EPRDF and the private press was filled with suspicion. The crackdown on the private press was a regular occurrence throughout the 1990s, with dozens of journalists being accused of disseminating misinformation or violating other provisions of the 1992 Press Act. This law allows government agencies to detain journalists without charge. According to Human Rights Watch , the time with the highest level of freedom for the Ethiopian media was reached in the May 2005 general election . In this controversial election, which saw high levels of violence from both protesters and authorities, many journalists were jailed along with members of the opposition parties and only later charged with "crimes against the Constitution " and other criminal offenses - many of them in Absence . Fines were also imposed on Ethiopian publishing bookstores.

According to Radio SRF 1, after a more open government took office, Ethiopia was the "big climber" on the list of media freedom of Reporters Without Borders in the report of April 2019.

See also

swell

  1. ↑ a b Ethiopian country profile (PDF; 161 kB). Library of Congress Federal Research Division (April 2005).
  2. ↑ “One Hundred Ways of Putting Pressure,” 49. Human Rights Watch report , accessed March 10, 2010
  3. ^ New report: An increasing climate of fear among media professionals, SRF1, April 18, 2019

Web links

Press agencies / printed newspapers

Online messaging services