Development Journalism and Press Coverage of Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria

Abstract

Development journalism has a strong normative appeal based on the assumed powers and responsibility of the press to mobilize and educate the public for support and participation in formulating and implementing national development policies. Journalism in developing countries like Nigeria is often associated with this brand of journalism and if that is so, it is expected that journalists, through their reporting style should be able to demonstrate these norms. There are three basic research questions that propelled this paper; Do Nigerian journalists report development issues? If they do, what style of reporting is generally favoured? Are they committed to development journalism by normative standards? Using content analysis to describe the pattern of reporting the activities aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goals in some selected newspapers in Nigeria, the conclusions are that the journalists pay attention by reporting the MDG activities but favoure more of straight news than interpretative/in-depth story style which tend to suggest that they give less priority to the norms of development news coverage. Also in terms of MDG goal attraction to the press, environmental sustainability and eradication of poverty scored higher more than gender equality and empowerment.