Advertising and Journalistic Objectivity: An Issue of Ethics in African’s Media in a Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo

The aim of this article was to show the ethical and deontological deviations linked to the growing practice of advertorials by journalists in the Congolese media, and the influence that advertisers exert on editorial content and journalists’ objectivity. The study sought to determine how Congolese journalists perceive the practice of advertorials in relation to the sacrosanct principle of journalistic objectivity. The ethical impact of journalists’ involvement in advertising, and of advertisers’ participation in the editorial content of Congolese media, was also examined. The data obtained from the interviews were analyzed from an inductive perspective, using an interpretative logic of content, and the explanation of the phenomenon under study was based on two theories from the ethical tradition of communication: the theory of social responsibility and the theory of truth.