MASS MEDIA AND THE COVERAGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES IN NIGERIA

    This is a study that is pre-occupied with an in-depth analysis of the influence of Mass Media pm the coverage of Human Rights activities and also on political issues in Nigeria. Some national deilies like the vangurage, New Nigerian, Punch and Daily Times Newspapers were critically evaluated and content analyzed, on a given period of time.
    In achieving this, we embarked on a look into the extent of coverage given to human rights issues as regards their views on national political issues. The press objectivity coverage quest and the ownership restrictions were also studied to determine whether it has any relevance with ethnicity or not. There is also a drawn comparison between newspapers which area supposed to have the characters of ethnicity and those that area biased based on the ownership pattern.
    On  the whole, five hypothesis were examined. The first hypothesis says that "is privately controlled newspapers report more objectively on human rights issues in Nigeria then the government owned newspapers" which was accepted by the result of this study.
    The second hypothesis which states that tribalism and religious sentiments, play prominent role in Nigeria media more than professional Journalism in governing political right issues. The results obtained in this study also accepted this hypothesis.
    The third and fifth hypothesis also lent statistical support. However, the forth hypothesis which states that media, operating with a particular geographical location will emphasize their interest above any other consideration in their coverage of political and human rights issues was to some extend rejected.
    A part of our recommendation is that since ethnicity has been revealed to be interfering with the objective of events, identified sectionalists should be denied licenses to own news paper or other mass media gadgets to allow free hards so as to ensure objectivity of coverage and true practices of ethical Journalistic measurer. It's therefore hoped that this research work will help to improve the mass media coverage of human right issues as this will educate and enlighten the society on their rights, which they at not fully aware of.

Title page                                        ii
Approval page                                    iii
Dedication                                        iv
Acknowledgement                                    v
Abstract                                         vi
Table of content                                    viii   

CHAPTER ONE     
Introductions                                    1    
1.0    Background of the study                            1
1.1    statement of the problems                        4
1.2    objective of the study                            4
1.3    Significant of the study                             5
1.4    Research questions                                5
1.5    Hypothesis                                    7
1.6    Limitations of the study                            8

CHAPTER TWO
Review of the literature                                10
2.0    Introduction on human right                        10
2.1         Sources of literature                            11
2.2    A   Reviews on the media with special
references to Nigerian situation                        12
2.2b    Emergence and development of human rights            16
2.2c    Media biases vis – a – vis political and
human rights violation an abuse in Nigerian                19
2.3    summary of literature review                        24

CHAPTER THREE
Research methodology                                27
3.0    Research method                                27
3.1    research design                                28
3.2    Research sample                                 28
3.3    Measuring instruments                            28
3.4    Data collection                                29
3.5    Data analysis                                29
3.6    Expected result                                30

CHAPTER FOUR        
Data analysis and results                                31
4.0    Data analysis                                31
4.1    results                                    31
4.2    Discussion of result                            36

CHAPTER FIVE        
Summary, recommendation and conclusion                     40
5.0    introduction                                     40
5.1    Summary                                    41
5.2    Recommendation                                42
5.3    Conclusion                                     43
Bibliography                                45
References                                    46