Author: ABELA MSIKULA
AfricaPress-Tanzania: EVENT-ORIENTED news coverage is amongst challenges that affect the quality of reporting in almost all media houses in the country, a 2019 report on media quality in Tanzania has revealed.
Compiled by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) under the sponsorship of the Switzerland Embassy in Tanzania, the ‘Yearbook on Media Quality in Tanzania 2019 Report’ states that on average, reporting on the official calendar remained above half of all reporting, at 58 per cent.
During the Report launching event yesterday in Dar es Salaam, a SJMC lecturer, who was also among the researchers, Mr Abdallah Katunzi, said despite the fact that there was a slight decrease by two percentage points compared to the 2018 Report, the problem persists.
‘‘Behind the general trend is an opposing development amongst media types. National radio stations considerably enlarged reporting based on their initiative by 12 plus per cent, but newspapers’ initiative decreased. TV and local radio experienced only a very small increase,’’ he said.
He added that there was a clear distinction between weekly and daily newspapers, wherein weeklies observed to have had a following largely through own initiatives while dailies relied more on the official calendar.
On average, the print media reports based on own initiative in 2019 was only 33 per cent, a drop of six percentage points from 39 per cent of 2018, said the presenter.
He said: “The Guardian highly followed the official calendar with 85 per cent, plus four per cent from 2018, and Daily News was 83 per cent, an increase of 19 per cent from 2018. Zanzibar Leo with 80 per cent versus 70 per cent and The Citizen scored 64 per cent versus 53 per cent.
More challenges observed include a serious drop in comprehensive reporting, as the diversity of perspectives reporting under a specific lens and therefore in-depth has suffered compared to 2018 in all media types.
Similarly, said Mr Katunzi, the number of media pieces with explicit opinions and viewpoints has fallen considerably, even when compared to an already low level in 2018.
Again, most media contents used to involve only a single source while also siding on only positives views and comments while skipping the negative and challenging opinions.
A senior journalist, Mr Jenerali Ulimwengu, commented that most of the challenges in media are due to the fact that many journalists do not want to develop their careers, especially through reading books.
