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

Background to the study

Media are one the fastest growing industries. This growth may be as a result of technological inventions andinnovations. The media is seen as a mirror which reflects the society. Aside the traditional functions of the mass media (which are to inform, educate and entertain), the media is supposed to be a vanguard for development.Curran cited in Nwabueze, Ezebuenyi & Ezeoko (2012) opine that the principal role of the media, according to traditional liberal theory, is to act as a check on the state, but this could be difficult if media are not free from advertisers. Nevertheless, Advertising has not only become an integral part of man‟s socio- political and economic life, but has also grown both as business activity and as a profession (Nwabueze, Ezebuenyi & Ezeoko 2012).

Many issues have emerged in the media among such are media ownership, advertisers influence and objectivity which are challenging the method of news coverage and reportage. Many scholars have conducted researches on media ownership generally for both broadcast and print media (such as Dominick (2002); Eijaz( 2012); McQuail (2010) and many others). According to Dominick (2002), the most common assumption is that the owners of the media influence the form and content of the media through their decision to employ certain personnel, funding special projects and providing a media platform for ideological interest groups. It is also assumed that at micro level, the attitudes, beliefs and values of a journalist influence upon his construction of reality; at macro level, newspaper editors accept and reject potential news stories for highly subjective reasons, which can be based on the editors own experiences, attitudes and expectation (Eijaz 2012). This is also determined by the ideology of the media house as well as advertising revenue.

Advertising has been one of the major sources of revenue for the media since the public media were commercialized. As argued by Pate, Adeyanju & Yahaya (2012), Commercialization has affected the quality and quantity of news especially in the broadcast media. When print media prosper financially, it is because advertisers recognize their worth as advertising media (Nwabueze, Ezebuenyi & Ezeoko 2012). Just as the Marxist saying that „he who pays the piper dictates the tune‟, the mass media today strive to serve the interest of their advertisers and owners best so as to sustain them in the market (McQuail 2010). The media puts into consideration the economic value of the news story before it even consider itas a news report. Therefore, the economics of demand and supply for advertising space in the print media is critical to the health of the media organization (Nwabueze, Ezebuenyi & Ezeoko 2012).It is also important to note that the media is supposed to observe a cardinal principle of news reporting which is objectivity. Even though various arguments have arisen as a result of how objective a news report should be, many are of the opinion that accuracy and fairness are yardsticks to assessing a news report. Nevertheless,Newspapers can provide more in-depth stories, great backgroundinformation and a greater understanding of the overall subject while still retaining objectivity (Nwabueze, Ezebuenyi & Ezeoko 2012).

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