Voice Depiction in Uganda's Media Coverage of Political Debate 2003-2005

This study investigated voice and issue representation in newspaper coverage of the constitutional amendment debate from September 2003 to September 2005. It aimed at discovering the dominant issues and voices in the debate; noticing any similarities and differences in the coverage of the debate between Daily Monitor & The New Vision newspapers; and finding out the implications of one issue and a few voices receiving disproportionate media attention on the democratic process in Uganda. The study employed a triangulation approach that encompassed content analysis, personal interviews, and review of appropriate documents. The researcher purposely selected two national newspapers, and two years, randomly sampled six months that captured 73 news articles as a whole, selected 11 key informants, and reviewed several relevant documents. The study found that the removal of presidential term limits dominated the debate on constitutional amendment with 97.3% frequency; government elite, male and urban sources dominated as news sources (voices). Both The New Vision and Daily Monitor almost had similar coverage and did not offer citizens a wide variety of opinions and perspectives. The author calls for localization of news values, public communication, community media, training of journalists and civic journalism.