MASS MEDIA AND THE COVERAGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES

This is a study that is pre-occupied with an in-depth analysis of the influence of Mass Media pm the coverage of Human Rights activities and also on political issues in Nigeria. Some national deilies like the vangurage, New Nigerian, Punch and Daily Times Newspapers were critically evaluated and content analyzed, on a given period of time. In achieving this, we embarked on a look into the extent of coverage given to human rights issues as regards their views on national political issues. The press objectivity coverage quest and the ownership restrictions were also studied to determine whether it has any relevance with ethnicity or not. There is also a drawn comparison between newspapers which area supposed to have the characters of ethnicity and those that area biased based on the ownership pattern. On the whole, five hypothesis were examined. The first hypothesis says that “is privately controlled newspapers report more objectively on human rights issues in Nigeria then the government owned newspapers” which was accepted by the result of this study. The second hypothesis which states that tribalism and religious sentiments, play prominent role in Nigeria media more than professional Journalism in governing political right issues. The results obtained in this study also accepted this hypothesis. The third and fifth hypothesis also lent statistical support. However, the forth hypothesis which states that media, operating with a particular geographical location will emphasize their interest above any other consideration in their coverage of political and human rights issues was to some extend rejected. A part of our recommendation is that since ethnicity has been revealed to be interfering with the objective of events, identified sectionalists should be denied licenses to own news paper or other mass media gadgets to allow free hards so as to ensure objectivity of coverage and true practices of ethical Journalistic measurer. It’s therefore hoped that this research work will help to improve the mass media coverage of human right issues as this will educate and enlighten the society on their rights, which they at not fully aware of.