Press Freedom and Human Rights: A Case Study of Selected Media Agencies and Firms in Kampala City

ABSTRACT This research pursued to investigate the relationship between press freedom and human rights in Kampala Central Division. The research was guided by four (4) major objectives, to examine the relationship between press freedom and human rights in Kampala Central Division, to find out how the press is suppressed in the spirit of exercising their human rights, to establish the conduct of media practitioners in exercising their rights and to also establish possible mechanisms on how to reduce violation of human rights. The research adopted a mixed approach involving convergent parallel, explanatory sequential, exploratory sequential, embedded, transformative and multiphase, this is because the approach provides a more complete and comprehensive understanding of the research problem than either quantitative or qualitative approaches alone. The study adopted a population of eight (8) practicing journalists and two (2) human rights lawyers. From the eight (8) of the practicing journalist and the two (2) human rights lawyers collectively, a sample size of all the 10 respondents was considered. The findings revealed that the press freedom and human rights are in almost all scenarios synonymous though their application in some occasions tends to be divergent and human rights are not absolute. The researcher recommended that the affected parties need to exercise their human rights in respect with the available regulatory legal frameworks.