A comparative content analysis of the coverage of arms deal scandal in three Nigerian newspapers

Abstract Generally, mass media especially print has the potential of providing information on current happenings in the society. It is obvious that fighting corruption is one of the priorities of the government of President Muhammadu Buhari. The media therefore has the task of covering and reporting all issues related to corruption effectively. This quantitative content analysis showed that arms deal scandals were reported in the Daily Trust, The Nation and The Guardian newspapers from January-May, 2016. The variables of frequency, location, and direction were used to measure the coverage of arms scandal as reported by these papers. Both news stories and feature articles were considered as the units of analysis. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the newspapers while stratified random sampling by days of the week to select the editions which amounted to 120 stories in the three newspapers. Moreover, Issue-Attention Cycle Theory was used as the theoretical framework. The findings of the study indicated that Daily Trust, The Nation and The Guardian newspapers had given prominence forming, 82.5% in the inside page in Daily Trust, 70% in the front page in The Nation and 85% in the inside page in The Guardian. The study concluded that Daily Trust, The Nation and The Guardian newspapers have substantially covered stories on arms deal scandal by reporting 93.3% of their stories on the issue under study. Key Words: Nigerian Corruption, Arms deal, Scandals, Coverage and Newspapers. * Msughter Eric Aondover is of the Department of Mass Communication, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. JCMR Journal of Communication and Media Research, Vol. 10, No. 1, April 2018 28-37