NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF COMMUNITY CRISES IN NIGERIA: IMPLICATION FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

ABSTRACT

The study is on an appraisal of newspaper presentation of community crises in Nigeria: implication for national development. The work set out to specially examine the reportage and presentation of various community crises stories in Nigeria by the Nigerian newspapers with the intention to determine how the newspaper handled the reportage of these crises and their implication for national development. The study made use of two research approaches, which are the content analysis which was considered appropriate because of the manifest nature of newspaper editions. And the second approach was survey because the study was also interested in the public perception of the crises coverage. For the content analysis approach, the code sheet was used as the research instrument while for the survey approach, the questionnaire was used. The study found that there is no significant difference between the attentions the newspapers gave the other issues in comparison with community crises coverage, the same situation obtains for their editorial treatment of community crises, and there is a significant difference in the newspaper coverage of community crises in the different locations reviewed in the study. Furthermore, the study found that police and government sources were the main sources of information for the newspapers and the people were not convinced by the newspapers coverage of the crises. Consequently, the study concludes that despite incidents of sensationalism in accuracies and distortion, newspapers on the whole made a real effort to give a balanced factual account of the community crises, that public knowledge of community crises was superfluous because the crises enjoyed no preferential treatments from the papers. The study found that the newspapers have thus far failed to report adequately on the causes and consequences of community crises and their underlying implication for national development. Finally, the study found that effective control of community crises is possible with adequate newspaper coverage. Based on the findings, the study recommends that there should be mutual orientation between the press and the community as regards crises coverage, in the same vein, it is desirable to designate and prepare a number of police officers to act as a press information officers in times of crises and finally, it is recommended that a general guidelines and codes be established to guide press behaviour and conducts during crises coverage.