Understanding the B-Metro 's production of child abuse reportage: A hierarchy of influences perspective.

This article examines the production dynamics behind the B-Metro tabloid's mediation of child abuse in Zimbabwe, using Reese's hierarchy of influences model to analyze micro-, meso-, and macro-level factors shaping its reportage. Findings from interviews with B-Metro journalists reveal that personal identities, professional ideologies, newsroom culture, political interference, and resource constraints influence the framing of child abuse stories, leading to an overreliance on court sources and a dominant legal narrative that overlooks structural causes. The study also highlights journalists' ambivalence, caught between compassion fatigue and an ethic of care, as well as the reproduction of gendered and heteronormative assumptions that marginalize certain forms of abuse, such as male victimization. The article suggests that expanding source networks and fostering reflexivity among journalists could democratize and deepen the tabloid's coverage of child abuse.