A fair assessment of the Nigerian media coverage of the 2015 general elections by analysts indicates that there were obvious predispositions by the media, even though there was unprecedented media engagement in the elections.
The evidence of bias by the media during the elections was largely informed either by political pressure, advert revenue and other deliberate or unintentional reasons, the analysts said, as they still extolled the media for their extraordinary and deep reporting of the elections .
The media rose to the challenge of deep election coverage, Yomi Badejo Okusanya, CEO of CMC Connect, a top PR firm said, but expressed reservations about how some sections of the media derailed in their coverage and reporting during the elections. “I think the media have the responsibility to set agenda but we saw that certain things that should not have been published were published by a few media organisations.”
Okusanya agreed that some media houses showed bias in their reporting due to their leaning but said even at that, they were fair but regretted that there were a few organisations that breached the code and were clearly partisan, which did not augur well.
Abdulhameed Ujo, former INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, described the use of media in the 2015 general elections as unprecedented in Nigeria’s elections. “It was simply extra-ordinary”. Speaking on a TV programme recently, Ujo said from political campaigns to elections and announcement of the results, the media were heavily involved, as they followed the polls closely.
There are now more robust publication platforms as traditional media were kept on their toes by other platforms, Gbenga Adefaye, former president of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, told BusinessDay.
According to Adefaye, what most publications did was to strengthen their platforms and rise to the occasion. “It was the right time for the media to rise to the occasion, if not ,they would have blamed themselves”.
In his evaluation of the role of the media in the elections, Phillip Isakpa, editor of BusinessDay, agreed that the traditional platforms of print and electronic media tried to focus on the issues the political parties and their candidates canvassed. But “there were instances of bias on how some particular segments of the media followed the candidates. In some cases, because some media organisations had taken positions, they tended to play out coverage on their positions.”
Isakpa further said that there was a gap on how the media followed the candidates in the presidential election. He regretted that the media largely followed only two presidential candidates , those of the PDP and APC, while mostly neglecting others.
“There were two main candidates that were projected by the media as if they were the only candidates that contested. The media were not fair in terms of providing coverage for others.
“For instance, there was a woman presidential candidate during the election that received little coverage across the board. Why that was so, I can’t tell, but one could say that perhaps the main candidates – Goodluck Jonathan of PDP and Muhammadu Buhari of APC had more funds to spend.
“And because of this, they were able to push their advert messages across the media. But editorially, all the candidates should have been given equal opportunity”.
Giving commendation particularly to Channels TV for its deep coverage of the elections, Isakpa said the media unfortunately got hooked and heavily reported the candidates’ issues instead of setting their own agenda on other issues, in line with the people’s wish.
Again, the media did not interrogate the candidates on their stated issues to determine what the candidates meant when talking about corruption, security and so on, he said.
Adedayo Ojo, the CEO of Caritas Communications, agreed that the media woke up to their responsibility and also attributed this to the blossoming of information, occasioned by the new media.
Assessing the seemingly partisan position of some media organisations in the gamut of the reportage, Ojo said all political parties enjoyed one support or the other in the media. “The media reflects what people are saying but at the end of the day, the media have moved up”, he said.
Daniel Obi
