Newspapers and Agenda Setting for Human Rights Violations in North-East Nigeria

Abstract

The researcher examined the role of newspapers in shaping public attention to human rights issues in Northeast Nigeria through their agenda-setting function. The study was anchored on the agenda-setting theory and a review of extant literature was carried out.
The findings revealed that newspapers have the potency to amplify the voices of marginalised groups by consistently bringing their struggles and concerns to public attention. Through advocacy and investigative reporting, newspapers can raise awareness and promote discussions on critical human rights issues. However, the researcher identified several challenges that limited the effectiveness of newspapers in fulfilling this role. These challenges include political bias, which leads to selective reporting; commercial pressures, which prioritises profit over social responsibility and the influence of media ownership, which often skews the framing of human rights stories. These factors create significant barriers to objective and comprehensive reporting. Thus, it was concluded that newspapers have a crucial role to play in promoting accountability, transparency and social justice.