An Investigation of Effects of Pluralization on Political Reporting in the Tanzanian Press

Abstract

The general purpose of this study was to investigate how media, particularly the newspapers, behave politically in a society which is in transition from authoritarianism to plural democracy. Specifically, the research sought to deter- mine the effects of pluralization on the political reporting of the newspapers in Tanzania. The last independent newspaper in Tanzania, an African country which be- came independent in 1960, was nationalized in 1965. From that time all media became the instrument of the government to propagate the socialism policies for- mulated by the single ruling political party. In 1992, in a major political change, other political parties were legally allowed in the country thereby making Tanza- nia one of the merging African pluralist states. These changes resulted in the multiparty political election which was held in 1995. Using the content analysis method, newspapers published during two periods of political campaign were analyzed. The periods included the 1990 single-party authoritarian political campaign and the 1995 multiparty democracy campaign. Newspapers published in these two periods were carefully analyzed for politi- cal reports appearing on the front page. Basing on the normative theories of the press, theories which make a distinction between the behaviour of the press in a democratic society and in an authoritarian society, the analysis concerned num- ber of articles carried out, news whole coverage, length of the political reports, group association of news makers, selected political themes and the direction of the political reports. Statistical tests were applied in order to determine the signifi- cance of the differences noted by the study between the two periods.