Abstract
Political godfather-son conflict has been upsetting Nigeria’s development. The conflict, rooted in clash of values, interest, needs and resources, involved political office holders in top hierarchy of government. There have been scholarly works on the gate-keeping and agenda setting role of the media in political conflicts, but the actual role the Nigerian media play in political godfather-son conflict is inadequate in literature. Thus, this study was carried out to determine how selected newspapers reported such conflict between a former State Governor, Rasheed Ladoja and a political godfather Lamidi Adedibu, in Oyo State, South Western Nigeria. The study period was 2004 to 2006 when the conflict heightened and escalated to physical violence and civil unrest. Five nationally-circulated newspapers were selected for the study, namely: Daily Champion, Daily Trust, Nigerian Tribune, The Guardian and The Punch. Purposive sampling was used to select 105 editorial items in 90 editions of the selected newspapers. The study adopted dialectical hermeneutics in data gathering and analysis. This was done to investigate partisanship, fairness, bias and largely the extent of social responsibility displayed in reporting the conflict by the newspapers. It was discovered that the vast reportage of the conflicts was largely negative as the newspapers overwhelmingly published stories that contributed to escalation of the conflicts. The reportage reflected incitement, partisanship and bias on the part of the newspapers. The reportage could not have helped in reconciling the conflicting parties, but fuelled the conflicts to violence and public unrest. The reportage was socially irresponsible and unethical journalistic practice has become a constraint to the development of democracy in Nigeria. The Nigerian press need to be development oriented by practising peace journalism. This will advance Nigeria’s democracy, as well as help prevent any military intervention in Nigeria’s politics in the future.
Highlights
Introduction and Statement of ProblemA review of scholarly works and research findings with respect to accuracy of reporting of conflict by the mass media shows that it may be fallacious sometimes to say that the media always handle conflict reporting with fairness, accuracy and justice, at least as expected of a socially responsible media
Research question 2 To what extent did ownership of the selected newspapers affect the reportage of the conflicts?
Research question 3 How socially responsible was the coverage of the conflicts by the selected newspapers? These questions sought to bring out the escalatory and deescalatory nature of the stories carried by the newspapers
Summary
Introduction and Statement of ProblemA review of scholarly works and research findings with respect to accuracy of reporting of conflict by the mass media shows that it may be fallacious sometimes to say that the media always handle conflict reporting with fairness, accuracy and justice, at least as expected of a socially responsible media. If the allegations of distortion of contents and biased reporting as well as inaccuracy in reporting, put up against the media appear not to have been substantiated considerably in other conflict situations, there are seemingly scholarship evidences supporting the allegations as far as political conflict reporting by the mass media is concerned This observed role of the media negates the canons of a socially responsible and development-oriented press in democratic societies, as contained in the works of Siebert, Peterson and Schramm [1] and Mc Quail [2,3,4]. This study was carried out to investigate and determine how the Nigerian press reported a particular tumultuous and ruinous type of political conflict recognized and named as political godfather-son conflict This conflict has been a persistent problem of Nigeria’s democracy as it has generated and led to many political conflicts with attendant violence in Nigeria
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