News Values in the African Press: a Comparative Content Analysis on State and Private Ugandan Newspapers

Since 1950s, journalism scholars and practitioners examining the gatekeeper functions of News Media sought to explain why some issues and events became newsworthy while others remained obscure. This work based on "News value theory" assumed that the more the news values a story had, the more its likeliness of reportage and placement in the newspaper. Remarkably, due to the emptiness in the African journalism literature, this work examined the predominant news values in the African press with a comparative analysis of Ugandan Newspapers. The author discovered that all news items analyzed had more than one news value. Similarly, the findings showed that news published in the Ugandan newspapers are more deviant and socially significant as reflected in the dominant news values explained in this book. The empirical findings demonstrated that Ugandan newspapers conceive the enhanced diversity of views in their news reportage. Results showed that 75% of the news analyzed were domestic news of which 53.7% focused on national issues. Whereas 36.8% of international news focused on Europe. This book provides meaningful information to journalism practitioners, Scholars and Communication Experts