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Effect Of Ownership On Professionalism In The Media Industries
[AN APPRAISAL OF NEWS CONTENT OF GOLD FM ILESHA]
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CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
According to Head and Sterling (1982) the term media “are those means of communication that use technology to reach large parts of the population almost simultaneously with the kind of news and entertainment that ordinary people can afford to pay†(Laaro, 2004). Invariably, the mass media are an important component of mass communication in disseminating symbolic content to a large interogenous and widely dispersed audience.
The history of journalism in Nigeria can be treated from the 1920s on the independence in 1960. The press became an industry, profession on a social force for libration of the Nigeria people. The multiple dimension of the press attracted the first set of laws by government against it. These laws over time became a fundamental element in the development of the relationship between the media and government in their joint enterprise of forging the countries democratic process.
The role of the modern press pioneers such as the Late Nnamdi Azikwe and the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, among others was to push forward and entrench the role of press as “the watch dog†of Nigeria’s nascent interest.
The media is grouped into print and broadcast media. The print media include: Newspaper, magazine, journals, book, pamphlets, etc. while the broadcast media consist of radio and television. The establishment of Iwe Iroyin fun awon egba ati Yoruba†by Reverend Townsend in Abeokuta in 1959 marked the birth of newspaper in Nigeria.
The initiative later gave rise to the establishment of newspaper outfits like that of Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe in 1931; named “West Africa Pilot†Azikwe’s paper pioneered a general protest against attainment of independence in 1960. The new Nigeria’s Newspaper Limited was established by the then government of the Northern region on 23rd October 1966. The first copy of the papers was issued on 1st January 1966. Before the establishment of new Nigeria newspaper, the Northern Nigeria government has established a Hausa Newspaper in Zaria called Gaskiya Ta Fi Kwabo in 1965. They simultaneously printed newspaper which enhanced the wise spread of newspaper in Kaduna and Lagos. As at today, Nigeria has various Newspapers ranging form the Nigeria tribune established 16th Novembers 1949. The punch, the Vanguard, the sun, this day tceters, at present, Nigeria has a number of different language newspapers ranging from Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Itsekiri and so on.
The radio on the other hand started in Nigeria on 1936 through the distribution of programme emanating from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London as part of its overseas service to Lagos, Kano and Ibadan under the arrangement referred to as radifussion. Similarly, in 1959, the Western Nigerian Broadcasting Service (WNBS) was established by Chief Obafemi Awolowo as the first Television station in Nigeria in 1962, The Western region government took full control of the WNBS by buying over, all the shares held by the overseas radiffusion Ltd.
Today Nigeria has thirty six states with each aspiring to set up her own television station in 1976; television stations started becoming colour programme.A new chapter opened in the history of T.V broadcasting in Nigeria with the federal government take over all televisions service in 1978. May state government have however, established more television and radio stations since then and have been competing favorably with the federal government stations.
In a democratic society, the media is referred to as the fourth estate of the realm; this means that after, the executive arm, legislative, judiciary, the media comes next. Edund Buke made this ascertain at one of the proceeding of the British parliament after he had mentioned the three well known estates of the realm, the lords spiritual, the lords temporal and the common. He pointed to the press gallery and added “and younger sits the fourth estates, more important of them allâ€. President J.F Kennedy’s remark on the American press that the president reigns for four years but journalist govern forever, also confirmed the fact that the media is a partner in progress with the government and not a tool. The broad function of the media are to act as watch-dog over the government, safeguarding the rights of the individual and reporting events accurately, objectively and without bias or prejudice.
However, media ownership tends to have influence on their performance as the “fourth estate of the realm†the degree of freedom of the government owned media cannot be compared with those of private-owned media deliberately avoid criticism of government action and play down stories capable of exposing government secret events when the public interest requires that such story be told to the public. The Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) for example will never transmit any report revealing the secrets of the federal government. The private media even through not entirely free from this faults expose bad acts of especially the government.
Government-owned media are purposely set to give maximum publicity to the government activities and any journalist who does not want to lose his/her job must keep to that policy. This policy also operate in Osun State where the Gold Fm must not Criticnce the government of the day when t he interest of the public is at stake. A good example of when government Rauf Aregbesola refused to show up at the commissioning of the state high court where the vice president was present. The government deliberately ignored the event based on some political crisis between the people’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the Action congress of Nigeria (ANC). Gold FM did not criticize the governor for dishonoring the vice-president in their news content. This is one of the reasons that propelled the researcher to embark on this research work to find out influence of ownership on the performance of Gold F M Ilesha, Osun State.
However, it was gathered that the station may love done this deliberately to get favor from the state government of course; they need financial muscle to survive.
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