Secularism and Ethical Issues in Media Practice as a Bane for National Development

Abstract

This paper addresses secularism and ethical issues in media practice as a bane for national development. In communication studies, ethics is central and critical to the overall process of journalistic engagement, especially to the credibility in the gathering, processing, and delivery of information for believability. Every profession has acts, codes, ethics, or laws guiding its activities. Whether these codes are backed by effective sanctions is also another issue. Media as a very vital sector of the society guided by certain fundamental law and ethics, which guides every action of journalists. While the laws are no doubt legal issues, which can lead to litigation and subsequent prosecution, many have argued that ethics are moral standards whose violations are not backed by sanctions. Within this context, this paper examined secularism in the Nigerian context, the forces that threaten the growth of secularism in Nigeria, ethical issues in Nigerian media and how it affects national development, and factors affecting ethical media practice and how it halted development in Nigeria. Development Media Theory serves the goal of the paper. The paper is predominantly based on information derived from the qualitative data using secondary sources such as relevant texts, journals, official publications, historical documents, and the Internet, which served as tangible sources of insight into the analysis. The paper argued that the media are very important subsystem in the social system that helps cajole and coordinate the other subsystems in the social system to enhance effective development. While the media cannot work independently to bring about development, other institutions also need the media for information dissemination, and sensitization via various mediums to actualize developmental objectives.