Press Coverage of the 1997 Ijaw-Itsekiri Communal Clash by the Guardian, the Punch and the Daily Times

Over the years, the Nigerian press have been variously accused of reporting conflict and violence situations in a negative light in order to discredit the government in power, in order words, contributing to the escalation of the conflict. The critics believe that the Nigerian press is socially irresponsible as the newspaper industry is as politicized as the country itself. The problem of this study, therefore, was the ownership influence on the Nigerian newspaper coverage of the 1997 Ijaw-Itsekiri communal clash. The objectives were to find out if the Nigerian press coverage of the 1997 Ijaw –Itsekiri communal clash was a function of ownership, the extent of such influence and make recommendations based on the research findings. To carry out the study, five research questions were posed. And three national newspaper were purposively chosen, namely the Daily Times , the Punch, and the Guardain. Each of the newspapers have 44 issues for the period covered (March 23rd – Dec.31, 1997). The unit of analysis were straight news story. Story was measured in columninches and coded as posit negative and neutral news stories. The attention score of the straight news story was obtained by scoring front page lead story 5, other front page lead story 4; back page lead story 3, other back page story 2, and inside page story 2. The data were also presented in tables. The study among other things showed that press gave huge extensive coverage to conflict more positively and ownership influenced the coverage of the conflict. Consequently it was recommended, among others that, the press should not accommodate bias in conflict reporting. Another study should be undertaken to examine the root causes of ethnic violence in Nigeria.

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