Towards a Journalism for Justice: A Normative Overture

In thinking about how African journalism can serve society better, one has to pay attention to the moment in which humanity finds itself today. Arguably one of the most exigent issues in contemporary society is that of social justice, whose dimensions have been exposed by the denudational forces of an equally potent malignant force, the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the crucial role of the media as a vector of social change, an appraisal of contemporary journalisms’ potency in fostering the transformation of society towards a just configuration is imperative. This article argues that the limitations of the morally indifferent objectivist journalism and the parochial focus of “corrective journalisms” are not adequate to meet the demands of multidimensional and imbricated justice questions in contemporary society. Drawing on both Fraser’s Justice Theory and Crenshaw’s Intersectional Theory as well as an empirical institutional analysis of the online journalism platforms New Frame and The Conversation Africa, this article argues that a journalism that is oriented towards justice would provide the optimum tools for nuanced discourses on extant, emerging and imbricated questions of social justice at both the local and international levels.