Reasons for and Responses to Radio Journalists’ Compensation Challenges: A Comparative Study of Radio Management Practices Across Varied Ownership Structures and Geographic Regions in Uganda
Abstract
Ugandan journalists face numerous challenges: political, including intimidation and harassment by security agencies, and economic challenges, including inadequate pay that has bred corruption in newsrooms, compromising the societal role of journalism in the country. Both political and economic challenges have been highlighted by several researchers. However, addressing journalists’ poor pay needs more attention from scholars, especially on its mitigation. With over 80% of Uganda’s population relying on the existing 309 radio stations for information, it is important to discuss the economic conditions under which radio journalists work. Employing economic theories like the theory of the firm, the spiral of decline, and the financial commitment model, this study investigates the root causes of poor pay for radio journalists in Uganda and what managerial practices are in radio newsrooms to address this challenge. The study employed in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight radio managers selected using the snowball purposive sampling method from East, West, North, and Central Uganda to compare practices in the different geographic settings among government, private and community-owned radio stations. Radio stations, especially in the rural areas are immensely affected by the country’s poor economic conditions that have sent them into a spiral of decline spiked by losses and low advertising revenue as a result of low purchasing power. That notwithstanding, the study reveals resilience among radio managers who have devised means such as saving schemes, sending out journalists to negotiate prices with advertisers, and advising journalists to find extra jobs. Whereas these methods seem to be temporarily addressing journalists’ low pay challenges, the study finds that such solutions, especially journalists doubling as salesmen and devoting time to extra income-generating jobs, could compromise the societal role of journalism. Building on existing proposals, the study concludes that new journalism models should be devised while studying journalism in the African context.