Critics of the country’s media say a newly polarized press is making things worse.
A man walks by a newsstand in Addis Ababa, the capital. By Paul Schemm Paul Schemm Overnight foreign editor based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Email Bio Follow April 21 at 6:00 AM ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — From a collection of modest offices in a half-empty high rise, one of Ethiopia’s most prominent journalists publishes his weekly paper with a staff of just four.
After becoming prime minister a year ago, Abiy embarked on reforms that brought home exiled politicians and armed opposition groups, freed political prisoners, made peace with Eritrea and opened up a heavily restricted media sector. In the 2019 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, Ethiopia rose 40 places, from 150 out of 180 countries to 110 — the biggest improvement this year in any country.
In a recent issue of Eskinder’s weekly Ethiopis, a front-page article accused Oromo politician Bekele Gerba, also recently freed from prison, of promoting ethnic cleansing because of a speech he made encouraging the use of the Oromo language. A man looks at newspapers in Addis Ababa. To many Ethiopians, the polarized, newly empowered press poses a danger to a fragile democracy. The prime minister himself has expressed a degree of frustration over the press freedoms that he has allowed, noting once that everyone in the country seemed to be an activist rather than a worker in a profession.
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