Reconciling Journalistic Professionalism With The Quality of News In Print Media: An Example of The Kenyan Press

International Journal of Communication and Media Science

© 2021 by SSRG - IJCMS Journal

Volume 8 Issue 1

Year of Publication : 2021

Authors : Dr. Korir G.K., Dr. Nabushawo J.C.

10.14445/2349641X/IJCMS-V8I1P103

How to Cite?

Dr. Korir G.K., Dr. Nabushawo J.C., "Reconciling Journalistic Professionalism With The Quality of News In Print Media: An Example of The Kenyan Press," SSRG International Journal of Communication and Media Science, vol. 8,  no. 1, pp. 8-14, 2021. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.14445/2349641X/IJCMS-V8I1P103

Abstract:

Influential discourses on news presentation across conventional newspapers consistently undervalue the final causality of insufficient journalistic professionalism in the embodiment of biased news on such platforms. This undervaluation manifests primarily in manifold media discourses in Kenya, where ongoing ampliative and existential statements on the concatenation of lower levels of journalistic professionalism, and biased news on newspapers, are either rudimentary or bland and vague. An iterative review of these discourses suggests that newspapers’ news biases are products of external interference from market-forces and the most influential actors’ egoism. This functionalist conceptual traction, which is deeply entrenched in the cognitions, affective, and evaluation of the kleptocratic class in the production of biased news in Kenya's press, intends to reproduce unhelpful topoi of looking at the dialectic consilience of such bias in its entirety. In the context of this straw position, there is a need to subsume this framework of thinking into that of a news reporter’s unpropitious conduct in newsgathering and delivery. This paper is ergo pedestaled on interactionist dualism in demonstrating how a news reporter’s deficient rectitude underpins a legacy of biased news in Kenya's press. It provides a perfect backdrop for a systematic and rigorous analysis by propounding, in a rationalist fashion, the exclusionary and inclusionary decisions that are derivable from a professional journalist ipso facto a print medium's news reporter. It makes an ineliminable link to the ideal observer theories of ethics in affording leverage points to reconcile journalistic unprofessionalism with pejorative news production. It adopts a qualitative systematic review research design in its underlying commitment to bring about such linkage to the fore by analyzing relevant secondary data. This analysis demonstrates inter-rater reliability through media experts’ holistic views that many news reporters succumb to coercion in the form of goodies to produce biased news. There is Pyrrhonism that the trend will change, given the zeitgeist of this era that contributes to news reporters' lack of probity. It is proposed that individuals such as these experts are better placed to advocate for adopting a desirable and obligatory approach to news reporting in Kenya's press.

Keywords:

Biased news, ideal observers, journalistic professionalism, morality, newspapers

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