Disequilibrium in NTA coverage of Political Campaign: Analysis of the 2015 Nigerian Presidential Election

Abstract

The pluralist theory of media ownership argues that media contents are mainly shaped by consumer demand in the marketplace giving the buying ‘public’ what they want. Moreover, editors, journalists, and broadcasters have a strong sense of professional ethics, which act as a system of checks and controls on potential owner abuse of the media. With this in mind, we examined the coverage of 2015 presidential campaign in Nigeria by the Nigeria Television Authority to determine the frequency and direction of coverage given to contending political parties. Findings reveal evidence of disequilibrium in the frequency of news coverage of the political parties. The directions of news coverage are suggestive of relative content censorship of campaign broadcast in terms of favourability to contending political parties. It is of critical professional concern that NTA was overly bent in favour of the ruling party – PDP, while portraying other parties in weaker directions and frequency. This finding challenges the pluralist perspective of independent media whose content are shaped by consuming public and recommends that measures such as enforcement of code of election coverage be put in place by professional regulatory bodies including the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to ensure that NTA operates on the regulatory tenets of equal opportunity for political parties to air their views during elections.