Advertising Ethics and Professionalism of ZNBC Radio 4 and Radio Phoenix in Zambia—A Content Analysis Study

This study of ethics and professionalism in the content of Radio Phoenix and ZNBC Radio 4 was inspired by, among other things, occasional public controversies in Zambia over the content of advertising. It sought to examine the advertisements gathered over a period of one week after being aired during prime-time, before, during, and after the “Shopping basket” programme for radio Phoenix, and the 18:00 hrs. News summary for ZNBC Radio 4, to determine extent to which unethical and unprofessional advertising occurred. The sample is from 2012. The main research question was: To what extent does unethical and, or unprofessional advertising feature in radio broadcast advertising in the two stations? The alternative hypothesis being tested was: There was more unethical content in the private station than in the quasi-government/public radio station. To effectively deal with the question and hypothesis, some sub-hypotheses were also tested to help arrive at a conclusion. The study found that, with respect to “ethical” and “unethical” conduct, there was a mixture of both, as well as incidence of both “professional” and “unprofessional” outputs.