Next to God, it is perhaps the press that legitimists what Nigerian or other people consider to the truth in any given situation. If people swear to God that Alhaji Awwal Ibrahim was actually caught with six million dollars at hear throw airport in 1982 or that Alhaji Ilmara Dikko smuggled himself though the boarders “by wearing the cassock of a catholic priest or that Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe has died, they will have a news paper to justify their claims.
I read it in the newspaper, if you doubt it, I stile have to copy of it, are some of the claims made by Nigerian media consumers seeking to be believed.
The realities of today tend to lead people to very misleading conclusions about the social responsibility roles and place of the Nigerian press in the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens of this country as far as their experiences are concerned.
Any democratic society must have a way ensuring adequate communication between the government and the governed. Ti is the responsibility of the press in a democratic society such as Nigeria to explain government activities to the public and to solvent the co operation of her citizen with the government and their participation in political life of the country. The press also servers as the watchdog of the government, criticizing the excesses of the government and ensuring public accountability for the good operation of the machinery of government.
In both democratic and military rules in Nigeria, the press has been accused of not being objective, factual, investigation and interpretative in its reporting. in this present leadership under chief Olusequn Obasanjo, the social responsibility roles for the press have been questionable. A good number of the Nigerian citizen feels out its social responsibility in accordance with the ethics and norms for the profession. Instead, the government in power dictates the tune.
In ay democratic society, freedom of the press is the watch word and it is to be guarded as an inaliable right of the people in a free society. If carries wit it the freedom and responsibility to discuss, question and challenge actions and utterances of government and of public and private institution.
The success and failure of a government is determined to be a considerable extent by the ability of the press to live up to its social responsibility.
Some obvious policies of chief Olusequn Obasayo’s government which the press supposed to have continuously criticized were played down by the Nigerian press. Such polices like the flagrant increase in the prices of petroleum products, barring of some commodities with out providing alternatives and promises of putting in place some palliative measures which never came. The Obasanjo leadership ensured that the media especially, the government continuously carried jungles in support of such policies that inflicted more pains on the citizens of this country. Few private media put up some editorial and features against such polices which were regarded as insignificant because at the and of the day, such policies sailed through
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