The Role of News Media Reporting of Conflict, National Security and Counter Terrorism in Nigeria

Abstract

Conflict and terrorism pose a grave danger to security, stability and development of Nigeria. Terrorist/violent groups exploit the media easily due to symbiotic relationship of feeding off each other. Current journalism celebrates conflicts as primary news value, thereby emphasizing violent aspect of conflicts. This paper examined the current methods of news media reporting of conflicts national security and counter terrorism with special focus on security views. The methodology adopted to generate data for the study was based on primary and secondary sources. Under primary source, the study made use of critical participatory action research (CPAR) an aspect of focus group discussions instrument. Two FGD were organized with the military, air force and other security experts/workers in Jos, Plateau State and Makurdi, Benue State. This is to elicit responses directly from those engaged in conflict/terrorism war in Nigeria. The study examined current methods of reporting conflict and terrorism with the aim of identifying novel methods of reporting conflict and terrorism that will promote peace, national security and counter terrorism in Nigeria. The theoretical basis for the study is the peace journalism framework advanced by Lynch and Galtung. The findings of the study reveals that current methods of news reporting promotes war journalism as against peace journalism advanced by the Johan Galtung’s Perspective. The study therefore recommend among others that conflict and terrorism reporters should adopt peace journalism reportage instead of war journalism that escalate rather than de-escalate conflict and terrorism in Nigeria.