‘Journalism in another form’: How exile experiences from Burundi renegotiate key elements of journalism

Abstract

Since the renewed outbreak of the ongoing crisis in Burundi in May 2015, triggering a media crackdown, over one-third of the country’s reporters have gone into exile. They therefore joined an increasing number of journalists worldwide who are forced into exile. Between 2015 and 2021, many of the exiled Burundian journalists continued reporting for newly founded exile media in neighbouring Rwanda. Before their forced closure in 2021, these exile media had established themselves as successful outlets providing the only independent information from an otherwise blacked-out country. Based on semi-structured interviews with 10 exiled Burundian journalists conducted in Rwanda in 2020, this article exemplifies how the condition of exile impacts journalistic practice and norms, and renegotiates ideas of media professionalism. It is shown how Burundian exiled journalists display a strong personal conscience as journalists highlighting the voice of the voiceless and attempting to separate activism from their journalism. At the same time, the findings identify the main struggles of Burundian exiled journalists in maintaining operational objectivity, which depends on funding, providing balanced reporting without access to official sources and conducting verification of information in the unattainable field. These challenges are in line with the findings of several other case studies with exiled journalists from different regions. Therefore, this article complements the rapidly growing body of literature on exile journalism with a Global South perspective, which to date is not well represented on the map of exile journalism that mostly features cases of exile in the Global North. Furthermore, this article shows that situating exile experiences within existing theories and frameworks of journalism presents limits as exile journalism, as in the Burundian case, is journalism ‘in another form’ with new practices and renegotiated standards of professionalism.