ANALYSIS OF NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF THE ABDUCTED CHIBOK SCHOOL GIRLS IN BORNO STATE OF NIGERIA IN 2014, USING THE GUARDIAN, DAILY SUN, DAILY TRUST AND LEADERSHIP NEWSPAPERS
ABSTRACT
The issue of terrorism has attracted global attention. In Nigeria in particular, the terrorist abduction of over 276 Chibok school girls attracted the highest global attention. Hence, this study was set to examine newspaper coverage of the abducted Chibok school girls. It analyzed the content of four Nigerian newspapers: The Guardian, Daily Sun, Daily Trust and Leadership newspapers in their coverage of abducted Chibok school girls in Borno state from April 2014 to September 2014. The researcher systematically selected a sample size of 224 editions of the four newspapers for six months to generate data for the study. 79 editions out of the sample do not have stories on Chibok girls while 145 editions of the total sample yielded 374 stories on Chibok girls which were analyzed. The major findings are that Nigerian newspapers down played the coverage of issues about Chibok girl’s abduction. The Nigerian newspaper coverage of the Chibok girl’s abduction suffered lack of in-depth and interpretative analysis. The findings showed that the volume of coverage was poor. The published materials were not given prominence by virtue of their placement or position in the newspapers as over 78.6% of them were placed in the inside pages of the newspaper. It was concluded that there was much of quantitative coverage than qualitative coverage because of the high disparity between the numbers of straight news items to interpretative news items. It was recommended that newspaper coverage of terrorism like Chibok girl’s abduction should be investigative and interpretative journalism-driven instead of mere reportage of straight news stories which doesn’t add much in the fight against terrorism and general information and education of the public.