Ethnic Consideration in Political Coverage By Nigerian Media

Abstract

Two cardinal rules in journalism ethics are that, (1) journalists should be objective in their reportage, that is news reporting should devoid of the journalist’s biases, opinions and views; (2) journalists should not originate materials which encourage discrimination on grounds of race, colour, creed, gender or sexual orientation or use the media for axe-grinding or settling scores. It is often discovered that many journalist find it difficult abiding by these rules. Besides this, journalists are pressured by ownership factor, which appear in form of house style; editorial policy and primordial attachment to set aside ethical injunction by putting sentiment into consideration in their reportage. This is why this paper throws its search light on examining ethnic consideration in political reporting by Nigerian media. In a country of 250 ethnic groups, the paper found that journalists are at times propelled by ethnic affiliation and ownership factor in reporting politics. The paper also traced the historical background of incursion of ethnicity into Nigerian politics to the founding fathers of Nigerian independence, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello. The paper says ethnicity found its way into Nigerian politics in 1934 when Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and his Igbo supporters angrily left Nigerian Youth Movement and that ethnicity took root in the 1950s when each of the aforementioned nationalists and politicians formed political parties of ethnic (tribal) colouration. From then till 1983, political parties and elections were largely, ethnically based. Worse still, many of the politicians were also newspaper proprietors who turned their newspapers to megaphone of the political parties.