Reporting on electoral violence in Nigerian news media: Saying it as it is?

Abstract

While Nigeria has a vibrant press media landscape, freedom of the press is only rated as partly free by Freedom House, mostly due to political influences on reporting. Yet the extent to which these influences affect the quality of reporting remains insufficiently investigated. We address this gap by analyzing how three newspapers with different political affiliations report on conflict in the run-up to the 2015 elections. Our analyses indicate that biases in reporting are generally limited, and that while political pressures are real, they are most evident in editorial choices.