Dear Reader,
MICT has been working with Sudanese journalists in North and South Sudan since 2009. Our projects, funded by the German Foreign Office, aim to support our partners as they strive to improve journalistic quality, while also working to prevent civilian conflict.
During our involvement in the region, we have witnessed how Sudanese journalism functions within a complex web of party politics, governance, and media. This observation was the starting point for further research into the multiple links between politics and the media in post-secession Sudan. This publication contains the first results of that research and can be seen as a presentation of our preliminary findings. For our next step, an equivalent study will be conducted in South Sudan.
We begin this study by focusing on the past. In Chapter 1, Roman Deckert outlines the historical context, illustrating how Sudan’s press was repeatedly transformed as politics shifted. He shows how the two spheres affect one another: Media development is constrained by politics, but the media can also trigger political change. The chapter reveals how Sudan’s press cannot be seen as a linear process of increasing censorship and repression. Instead, journalists have faced periods of fluctuating press freedom, pluralism and restriction. Journalistic practices have morphed, in keeping with the prevailing climate of tolerance or restriction.
Following this historical review, Chapter 2 shines a spotlight on Sudan’s current media landscape. Roman Deckert depicts the role of government and non-government institutions, legal frameworks, press freedom, and pluralism in Sudanese print media.
In Chapter 3, Anke Fiedler provides an in-depth analysis of Sudanese journalists’ experience of print journalism. By exploring themes like their self-image and motivations, markets and impact, individual agency and its boundaries, she highlights the challenges and rewards of day-to-day work as a journalist in Sudan. The chapter is based on interviews with 15 key figures from Sudanese journalism in Khartoum, conducted in December 2011, and includes a qualitative analysis of these conversations. From her findings, we learn about the profession’s high social standing, which helps compensate for poor pay and constant official scrutiny. We learn how newspapers instigate political discourse – despite their lackluster circulation figures.
Fiedler also probes why journalists opt for a profession in which they risk censorship - and even imprisonment. Finally, she charts journalists’ contrasting opinions about how Sudan’s division has impacted journalism.
In Chapter 4, Magdi Al Gizouli provides an overview of political profiles of Sudan’s leading newspapers, detailing their histories, ownership and stakeholders, as well as the journalistic quality of each publication. For reference, we have also included a glossary of the political parties.
This volume seeks to impart a deeper understanding of the political nature of the Sudanese press. Through observation, research and analysis, it also conveys a multifaceted impression of Sudanese journalists’ working conditions.
It tries to paint an authentic and differentiated picture of their situation, looking beyond stereotypes of the Sudanese press as “unfree” and hence not worthy of further research. By combining facts and figures with journalists’ personal anecdotes and opinions, I think this volume captures the complexity of the subject – a subject which, as the illustration on page 19 accurately reveals, is far from straight forward.
Anja Wollenberg (MICT, director)