Reporting of Rural Grazing Area Initiative in Selected Daily Newspapers in Nigeria

Abstract

Communication is noted as a vital catalyst in the process of social-awareness. For a country to advance, the citizens must be aware of government policies, implications and individuals’ roles. RUGA, a government initiative, generated so much controversy within the country. This may be due to poor sensitization of the programme’s benefits on the part of the media organizations. This study was conducted to assess how RUGA issues were reported in selected Nigerian newspapers, by assessing: the prominence given to RUGA news with reference to other subject matters, the frequency of reportage, and news report format. A systematic quantitative content analysis was used in collecting, analyzing as well as interpreting the data for the study. A total of 276 daily publications of three newspapers were analyzed from a pool of sample drawn through purposive sampling technique from issues of the newspapers published within three months’ period of July to September, 2019. The data from these newspapers were analyzed using frequencies and percentages. Findings showed that RUGA issues were not given adequate prominence in the three newspapers, and the newspapers performed more of an informative role in the reportage rather than giving a journalistic analysis of the policy itself in form of feature or editorial. The study recommends that news writers should be more analytic in their style of reporting developmental initiatives so as to help people understand the purpose and essence of such initiative. Also, the Nigerian newspapers, should scale-up agricultural content in their publications as a way of consolidating agricultural consciousness in Nigerians.