The Ideal and Practice of Constructive Journalism: How South African Journalists Perceive Their Roles

Abstract

This article enters into a growing conversation in the literature around the notion of constructive journalism as a normative paradigm for journalism practice. Literature on constructive journalism has largely been dominated by perspectives from the Global North. Focusing on the developing Global South context of South Africa, this study asked: What are the perceptions and attitudes of South African editors and journalists towards constructive journalism in online news? Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of five journalists and three editors working for digital news outlets representing a range of editorial approaches and target audiences. The article moves beyond an application of the notion of constructive journalism to the particular context, to engage the notion of constructive journalism on a theoretical and conceptual level. It does this by drawing on interview findings to propose an alignment between the notions of “development journalism” and constructive journalism.