Media roles, and ethics: perceptions of Brazilian, American and French journalist
This paper analyzes self-perceptions of media roles and ethics of a sample of Brazilian journalists and compares them with American and French journalists. French and American styles of journalism have had major inﬂ uences on Brazilian newspapers at different points in time. The study included a self-administered survey with 402 journalists working for 13 leading news organizations and personal interviews with renowned journalists of Sao Paulo- Brazil’s main media hub.  The typical Brazilian journalist in this study was a young white middle-class male, politically left leaning oriented, more likely to be married and Catholic. Respondents held a pluralistic view regarding media roles and expressed higher tolerance of controversial journalistic practices compared to that of their counterparts. Findings are in line with the social-political environment in which journalists operate. They do not enjoy special rights of access to government information, tend to distrust public institutions and have still been adapting to press freedom since the country’s redemocratization.
Coverage of the 2010 Brazilian Presidential Elections
A framing analysis of mainstream online organizations and their bloggers and columnists on the 2010 Brazilian Presidential Elections revealed that framing do have the potential to expose ideological elements on how the media position themselves in the public sphere. Thematic and episodic frames dominated the news with a special focus on press freedom, social and economic problems, corruption and abortion. The mainstream media focused their coverage on the Workers’ Party employing primarily a critical/ adversarial tone as opposed to an interpretive analysis tone. Professional ideology mixed with political preferences both by journalists and media owners marked the Brazilian online coverage blurring the lines between the private and the public, exactly in the same way that outgoing President Lula da Silva acted during the presidential campaign. Journalism status quo emerged as a main topic in the coverage as a free press under attack quickly reacted with rage causing a rift between news organizations that criticized the outgoing president and those that supported him. Furthermore, a popular president apparently unaffected by corruption scandals and the country’s most powerful media groups confronted each other in an exhaustive and unfinished battle.
Drivers of Live Cattle Price in the Livestock Trading System of Central Cameroon
Livestock production and trade are critical for the food security and welfare of rural households in sub-Saharan Africa. In Cameroon, animal trade consists mainly of live cattle commercialized through livestock markets. Identifying the factors contributing to cattle price formation is critical for designing effective policies for sustainable production and for increasing food availability. In this study, we evaluated the influence of a range of individual- and market-level factors on the price of cattle that were sold in all transactions (n = 118,017) recorded over a 12-month period from 31 livestock markets in the main cattle production area of the country. An information-theoretic approach using a generalized additive mixed-effect model was implemented to select the best explanatory model as well as evaluate the robustness of the identified drivers and the predictive ability of the model. The age and gender of the cattle traded were consistently found to be important drivers of the price (p < 0.01). Also, strong, but complex, relationships were found between cattle prices and both local human and bovine population densities. Finally, the model highlighted a positive association between the number of incoming trading connections of a livestock market and the price of the traded live cattle (p < 0.01). Although our analysis did not account for factors informing on specific phenotypic traits nor breed characteristics of cattle traded, nearly 50% of the observed variation in live cattle prices was explained by the final model. Ultimately, our model gives a large scale overview of drivers of cattle price formation in Cameroon and to our knowledge is the first study of this scale in Central Africa. Our findings represent an important milestone in designing efficient and sustainable animal health management programme in Cameroon and ensure livelihood sustainability for rural households.