An Examination of News Placement (Prominence) of President Muhammadu Buhari Administration’s War against Corruption by Nigerian Newspapers
Ngwokor, Joseph Obi; Okoro, Daniel O. & Abusadiq, Loko A.
Department of Mass Communication
The Federal Polytechnic, Nasarawa, Nasarawa State
E-mail: joezinger2005@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The paper examined newspaper placement of news on the war against corruption embarked upon by the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration which was declared as soon as it was inaugurated May 29, 2015. The major objective was to determine the prominence newspapers in the country accorded the anti graft crusade. Adopting the quantitative content analysis, a combination of both the probability and non probability methods were used to choose four (4) newspapers: Daily-Trust, The-Nation, This-Day and Leadership from the total population of national dailies in the country. The study was based on a sample size of forty eight (48) editions from the selected newspapers (Three {3} editions per month from each of the newspapers across four {4} months i.e. December 2015-March 2016). The agenda setting theory which posits that mass media may not tell people what to think but it presents to them what to think about, served as the sub structure upon which the entire supper-structure of the study rests. From the data gathered and analyzed, the study found that an insignificant 10.1% of the corruption related news, reported by the studied newspapers during the period under review was placed on the front page, while 88.2% of the news was found on the inside pages, with 6.1% devoted to the back page. The paper concluded that Nigerian newspapers paid lip service to the war against corruption crusade embarked upon by the President Buhari’s administration, by burying a larger chunk of their news on corruption on the inside pages of their newspapers, where little or no attention is paid by readers.
