RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ADVERTISEMENTS AND COVERAGE OF DEVELOPMENT NEWS BY THE DAILY TRUST AND THE NATION NEWSPAPERS (JANUARY 2012 – DECEMBER 2013)

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ADVERTISEMENTS AND COVERAGE OF DEVELOPMENT NEWS BY THE DAILY TRUST AND THE NATION NEWSPAPERS (JANUARY 2012 – DECEMBER 2013)

Abstract:

This research work examined the relationship between advertisements and coverage of development news in Nigerian newspapers. The research focused on assessing how advertising influences the coverage of development news in the Nigerian press, and also the frequency of development news featured in the newspapers. The research is anchored on the political economy theory of the media. The research employs method triangulation comprising content analysis and key informant interview. Two national independent newspapers, Daily Trust and TheNation were content analysed with a systematically drawn sample of size of 343 editions. Frequency distribution tables and charts were used for descriptive statistics while statistical measures of ANOVA and regression were used for inferential statistics. Findings revealed that coverage of development matters by the two papers are low, but Daily Trust has a higher frequency of coverage than The Nation newspaper. Development issues like poverty, unemployment and rural development are not given enough coverage as education, health, environment and agriculture. At 0.05 level of significance, it was also found that advertising has a positive relationship with development news reports in the two papers, as advertisements increases the coverage of development issues also increases. It is recommended among others that there is need for higher coverage of poverty reduction, unemployment and rural development in the newspapers because these issues also impact on the lives of the people.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ADVERTISEMENTS AND COVERAGE OF DEVELOPMENT NEWS BY THE DAILY TRUST AND THE NATION NEWSPAPERS (JANUARY 2012 – DECEMBER 2013)