Party Politics and Influence Towards Public  Broadcast Stations� News Credibility and  Public Relations in Nigeria

Olubodede; Emmanuel Olurotimi

Volume : III, Issue : IX, September - 2013

Party Politics and Influence Towards Public Broadcast Stations� News Credibility and Public Relations in Nigeria

Olubodede, Emmanuel Olurotimi

Abstract :

Public oadcast stations concern for news credibility in Nigeria; the likely differences in the challenge of ownership influence posed by partisan leadership governments towards public oadcast stations’ news credibility and public relations; and how public relations may have been employed towards tackling possible problems of news credibility are the inputs of this paper. the survey research design was used to purposively study staff of four public oadcast stations –Nasarawa Broadcasting Service, Lafia, Nasarawa state, Nigeria; Radio Benue, Makurdi, Benue state, Nigeria; Ondo State Radio–Vision Corporation, Ondo State, Nigeria; and Lagos Television, Lagos state, Nigeria as well as members of the public in the remote location of the respective oadcast stations. While the public oadcast stations were purposively considered, the oadcast staff were non–purposively sampled. At 95% confidence level –0.5 margin of error, respective sampling sizes –NBS=60; RB=90; OSRC=90; LTV=120 were drawn through the simple random sampling technique. 200 sampled in each location hosting the respective stations –Lafia, Makurdi, Akure, and Akuka. Two different closed–ended questionnaire were used for data collection. Study concludes that journalists are not ignorant of news credibility concerns; all partisan government leaderships have certain degree of ownership influence towards oadcast news credibility in Nigeria, and perhaps beyond; and there is a significant difference between the level of news credibility of public oadcast stations with quality public relations and those without. Recommendations include: mediating critically between public interests and the overall party interests; using oadcasting for democratic participation and development; and employing public relations tactics towards tackling possible problems of news credibility in some oadcast stations in developing countries, and beyond.