SUPPORT ETHIOPIA INSIGHT .wpedon-container .wpedon-select, .wpedon-container .wpedon-input { width: 200px; min-width: 200px; max-width: 200px; } How silence, distortion, and erasure ensure Ethiopia’s fragile tomorrowIt begins not with a loud censorship decree, but with a quiet absence. A village buries its dead after a clash, but the news never comes. A mother in Oromia searches for her son taken by soldiers, yet his name is erased before it reaches the headlines. In Amhara, a protest swells in the streets, only to vanish from the next day’s papers as if it never happened. This is how truth dies here, not all at once, but piece by piece, until the only history left is the one written for us, not by us.This is what the erosion of a free press looks like, not a sudden collapse, but the steady shrinking of reality until the only truth that survives is the one most useful to those in power. People vanish first from coverage, then from public memory, and finally from the moral imagination of the nation. The victims’ pain becomes negotiable, filtered, reframed, or erased entirely, depending on whose story is being told.Political PressIn Ethiopia, the press behaves like a chameleon, its colors shifting with the political season. Today’s opposition outlet, fierce in its denunciations, becomes tomorrow’s loyalist megaphone. The slogans truth, justice, and accountability stay the same, but the target of outrage shifts to match the interests of whoever holds the reins.During the Tigray war, federal outlets reduced a full-scale armed conflict into a “law enforcement operation,” erasing its human cost. Reports of massacres, famine, and mass sexual violence, verified by human rights organizations, were dismissed as enemy propaganda, while allegations of TPLF atrocities against Amhara civilians received immediate and emotive coverage.In Oromia, the state has painted the Oromo Liberation Army almost exclusively as “terrorists,” highlighting their alleged attacks while downplaying the civilian deaths caused by federal forces. Manufactured ComplianceThe mechanics of this are as important as the intent. Ethiopian media, both state-owned and many ostensibly independent outlets, are rarely in the business of building consensus. They are in the business of manufacturing compliance. Narrative is the starting point; facts are curated to fit it, or omitted entirely. Even “fact-checking” has been weaponized, as shown by this analysis of @ETFactCheck during the Tigray war.Regional media replicate these patterns on smaller stages. Amhara-focused outlets spotlight territorial protests ignored by federal broadcasters; Oromo-focused platforms cover state abuses that national media will not touch. Independent monitors have tracked these narrative distortions.The result is a fractured national consciousness. Without a shared account of events, there can be no honest reckoning with the past, no accountability in the present, and no agreement on the path forward.Communities grieve in isolation, and atrocities pass without broad outrage because large portions of the public never hear of them, or are told they are fabrications. Two neighbors can share a border, a market, even a family connection, yet inhabit entirely different universes of “truth”.This is not an Ethiopian invention. Around the world, media institutions wear the mask of moral duty while serving as instruments of influence. In conflict, coverage is rarely about informing the public, it is about controlling the frame, setting the terms of what can be seen, felt, and acted upon. That control is not limited to the present moment. It reaches into the past, reshaping memory itself.Scripted FutureWhen memory is controlled, the future is no longer an open field, it is a script already written. The past becomes a weapon, its rough edges smoothed or sharpened to suit those in power.In Ethiopia, that means entire communities can be written out of history while their oppressors are recast as saviors. Children grow up learning a version of their country that never existed, pledging loyalty to leaders who have already decided the limits of their tomorrow.Over time, people stop resisting, not because they believe the official version, but because they have nothing else to hold onto. The loss of memory becomes the loss of imagination, and a society without imagination cannot choose its own future.The tragedy is not just that the press fails to hold power to account. It is that it teaches people to accept their own erasure as normal. It turns the extraordinary into the unremarkable: a bombed school is just another headline, a disappeared activist just another absence. Over time, this dulling of outrage becomes the most dangerous inheritance of all. For once the public stops reacting, the powerful no longer need to hide what they do. The page is blank, and they hold the pen.The question is not whether Ethiopia has a free press. The question is whether Ethiopia can reclaim one before too much of its memory, and too much of its future, is gone. .wpedon-container .wpedon-select, .wpedon-container .wpedon-input { width: 200px; min-width: 200px; max-width: 200px; } Query or correction? Email us window.addEventListener("sfsi_functions_loaded", function(){if (typeof sfsi_widget_set == "function") {sfsi_widget_set();}}); While this commentary contains the author’s opinions, Ethiopia Insight will correct factual errors.Published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.The post Ethiopia’s Press is Manufacturing Compliance appeared first on Ethiopia Insight.