Factional Journalism in South Africa's Privately Owned Print Media: An Exploration

This paper theorized the concept of “factional journalism” and media capture within South Africa's privately owned print media landscape. This theorization attemps to understand media capture along partisan and factional cleavages in the post democractic dispensation. To understand the factiona...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of communication inquiry Vol. 50; no. 1; pp. 9 - 29
Main Authors: Matsilele, Trust, Hlungwani, Trevor
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.01.2026
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:
Bias
Case studies
Journalism
Journalists
Mass media
Ownership
Political economy
Political elites
Politics
Printing
South Africa
advocacy journalism
advertising
audience reception
activism
broadcasting
ISSN:0196-8599, 1552-4612
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This paper theorized the concept of “factional journalism” and media capture within South Africa's privately owned print media landscape. This theorization attemps to understand media capture along partisan and factional cleavages in the post democractic dispensation. To understand the factional journalism phenomena in South Africa, we employ a case study design that relies on interviews with Media24 and Independent News and Media (also known as Independent Media) aligned political editors and journalists who have covered the Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa's presidencies. Theoretically, we rely on the political economy framework of the media. For this investigation, we wanted to understand how, if at all, media ownership structures and political-economic interests influence journalistic bias in how the Zuma and Ramaphosa presidencies are/have been represented. Findings from this study confirmed the enduring political and business pressures exerted on journalists when covering political elites. While our study observed few cases of outliers, the general trend confirms the continued relevance of the political economy framework as a viable model when seeking to understand editorial bias when covering political elites.
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ISSN:0196-8599
1552-4612
DOI:10.1177/01968599251343050