Making sense of Ethiopian journalists’ prison experiences during Meles Zenawi’s administration: a phenomenological inquiry

Abstract

This study investigated the agony, tribulations, and trials that private press journalists in Ethiopia experienced firsthand in several detention facilities in Ethiopia for engaging in journalistic activity. The study used the period of the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s administration, and it employed a qualitative phenomenological research approach to examine the lived experiences of 12 private press journalists. Alfred Schutz’s “Life World” theory and the Italian fascist political theorist Giovanni Gentile’s Authoritarian Democracy theory were used as lenses to provide a “pure” description of the subject under study. Qualitative data were obtained through semi-structured in-depth interviews. The data were examined using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as the participants shared their narratives. The main finding indicates that journalists lacked professional and civic freedoms to carry out their duties since the government interjected into their daily lives, imprisoning them and limiting their capacity to have the ultimate say over their work and lives. We suggest that the government should revise impending laws and regulations that hamper freedom of expression in Ethiopia and create a policy requiring its officials to provide information to journalists without regard to their political, social, or other relationships with the media.