Decolonising Media Ethics and Media Accountability Systems: Elevating the Value of Voice in Southern Journalism

The decolonisation of journalism teaching curricula will not take place within a vacuum. Inevitably, journalism graduates who have received tuition with a view toward a decolonised perspective of the field will have to subsequently enter the professional environment in a media sector which is itself not yet decolonised. While these media graduates have the potential to act as future change-agents in the sector, there is likely to be an initial disjuncture between their decolonised orientation, and their workplace experiences involving entrenched modes of news-making, media management strategies and the structural architecture of a media landscape that is still informed by the normative positions of the Global North.

For the decolonial project to be more than a superficial exercise and challenge the now embedded Northern developed traditions enough to allow for the emergence of a more Southern orientated media landscape, all sectors of the media environment must undergo reform, which includes the structure of media markets and the related political economy. Equally the architecture of media regulation and policy requires revision. Recognising that the decolonisation of the Southern media sphere will depend on change within many segments of the overall media ecology, this discussion will focus primarily on the area of journalistic ethics and media accountability systems.

Citation: Reid, J. 2021. Decolonising Media Ethics and Media Accountability Systems: Elevating the Value of Voice in Southern Journalism, in Decolonising Journalism Education in South Africa Critical Perspectives, edited by Ylva Rodny-Gumede, Colin Chasi, Zubeida Jaffer and Mvuso Ponono, Unisa Press: Pretoria. ISBN 978-1-77615-094-6

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