A MASS COMMUNICATION RESEARCH PROJECT ON

REVENUE ALLOCATION FOR EACH STATE AND BUDGET OF TWO STATES IN EACH GEO-POLITICAL ZONE
PRESENTED BY

INTERVIEW GROUP (GROUP 2)

SUBMITED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF MASS COMMUNICATION LAGOS STATE POLYTECHNIC, IKORODU.

GROUP NAME 1. Shoyoola Ayoola Sarah 2. Adekunle Josephine Kehinde 3. Dauda Basirat Adeola 4. Osidero Abosede Abiodun 5. Olukolade Bukola Janet 6. Mbagwu Mirian Chioma 7. Abang Vivian Okorinne 8. Owolabi Kudirat Oluwatobi 9. Adebanjo Adebusola Christiana [Link] Olayinka Emmanuel [Link] Damilola Hakeem [Link] Oluwatobi Pedetin 124072043 124072048 124072060 124072036 124072070 124072028 124072001 124072038 124072046 124072053 124072004 124072012

ABSTRACT Despite the prevalence of mass media institutions and 'paraphernalia' in Nigeria, the Nigerian masses still remain marginalized and denied their right to communicate through the conventional mass media. This is due to the structure of mass media ownership and distribution which reflects pro-urban concentration and bias. This article argues that given this reality, one cannot legitimately and accurately talk of mass' communication in Nigeria since the media of mass communication is used mainly to talk to the masses rather than with the masses; neither are they used by the masses themselves to talk with each other. To this extent, therefore, there is a state of 'mass in communication' in Nigeria, a state which calls for urgent change through democratization of the mass media.

INTRODUCTION Mass Communication is a means of disseminating information or message to large, anonymous, and scattered heterogeneous masses of receivers who may be far removed from the message sources through the use of sophisticated equipment. In other words, communication is the sending of message through a mass medium to a large number of people.

Mass Communication represents the creation and sending of a homogeneous message to a large heterogeneous audience through the media. Mass communication studies the uses and effects of the media by many as opposed to the study of human interaction as in other communication contexts.

Mass communication is "the process by which a person, group of people, or large organization creates a message and transmits it through some type of medium to a large, anonymous, heterogeneous audience." (Pearce, K.J., 2009). Mass communication is regularly associated with media influence or media effects, and media studies. Mass communication is a branch of social science that falls under the larger umbrella of communication studies or communication.

The history of communication moves from prehistoric forms of art and writing through modern communication methods such as the internet. Mass communication fits in when humans began to be able to transmit messages from a single source to multiple receivers. Mass communication has moved from theories such as the hypodermic needle model (or magic bullet theory) through more modern theories such as computer-mediated communication. (Steinberg, S.H., 1996)

In the United States, the study of mass communication is often associated with the practical applications of journalism, television and radio broadcasting, film, public relations, or advertising. With the diversification of media options, the study of communication has extended to include social media and new media, which have stronger feedback models than traditional media sources. While the field of mass communication is continually evolving, the following four fields are generally regarded to be the major areas of study within mass communication. They exist in different forms and configurations at different schools or universities, but are (in some form) practiced at most institutions that study mass communication.

FEATURES OF MASS COMMUNICATION Mass Communication is distinguished from other kinds of communication by a number of features or characteristics. They are: 1. Mass Medium 2. Presence of Gatekeepers 3. Delayed Feedback 4. Limited Sensory Channels 5. Impersonal Vs Personal Communication

MASS MEDIUM: For a medium to be regarded as mass in communication it must have acquired fifty million adopters (Kaye & Medoff 2005). Radio, Television, internet etc are examples of media which are regarded as mass media because they can reach out to no fewer than fifty million audience at a time. In mass communication, messages reach far beyond the immediate proximity of the sender and could even get to the uttermost part of the world.

PRESENCE OF GATEKEEPERS: In mass communication, sent messages do not reach the audience in raw form. Messages are usually treated. The implication of this is that there is usually no guarantee that what the message receivers get is exactly the message sent by the source. In mass media organizations, the gatekeepers are usually the reporters, sub-editors, editors, producers, writers, etc.

DELAYED FEEDBACK: Unlike in interpersonal communication where reply/feedback is made almost instantly, the feedback in mass communication is always delayed, say for a day, week or month. Burgoon et al 1978 cited in Folarin 1994 says Feedback is often limited, delayed and indirect. Mass Communicators are usually subject to additional feedback in form of criticism in other media, such as a television critic writing a column in a newspaper (Baran 2004:7). In other words, feedback in mass communication is not instant. It is mostly through letters to the editor or telephone calls or personal calls on the media.

LIMITED SENSORY CHANNELS: This feature has to do with the fact that mass medium limits the number of sensory channels upon which audience can draw. In other words, mass communication only enables one to use his or her sense of sight and hearing since one can only see the visual picture and hear the voice of the speaker on the broadcast station. This is unlike in a face- to- face communication where the audience can shake hands or hug the politicians and as such, have no limitation to the sensory channels. IMPERSONAL AND PERSONAL COMMUNICATION: Unlike in face to face communication where communication is personal, participants in mass communication are usually strangers and, hence messages are more impersonal.

MEDIA OF MASS COMMUNICATIONS There are various media of communication used in mass communication and they can be grouped into two. Print and electronic media Print media refers to newspapers, books, journals, magazines and other printed medium used in passing information while electronic media generally refers to any electronic form or medium used in the dissemination of information. E.g. computer, TV, radio etc.

PRINT MEDIA Printing is a process for reproducing text and images, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing. The earliest form of printing was woodblock printing, with existing examples from China dating to before 220 A.D. and Egypt to the fourth century. Later developments in printing include the movable type, first developed by Bi Sheng in China, and the printing press, a more efficient printing process for western languages with their more limited alphabets, developed by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century. Printing brought expansion in literacy. People found it necessary to learn how to read and write. Printing had become one of the engines driving the industrial revolutions. It was responsible for building and disseminating bodies of knowledge and the refinement of new machines. (Steinberg, S.H., 1996)

Printing made newspapers and magazines possible, brought scientific and technological development, and technology as a result of industrialization gave us mass market magazines However, one major challenge facing the printing world is that most people prefer watching television or listening to radio than reading books.

ELECTRONIC MEDIA Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical energy for the end-user (audience) to access the content. This is in contrast to static media (mainly print media), which today are most often created electronically, but don't require electronics to be accessed by the end-user in the printed form. The primary electronic media sources familiar to the general public are better known as video recordings, audio recordings, multimedia presentations, slide presentations, CD-ROM and online content. Most new media are in the form of digital media. However, electronic media may be in either analog or digital format. Although the term is usually associated with content recorded on a storage medium, recordings are not required for live broadcasting and online networking. Any equipment used in the electronic communication process (e.g. television, radio, telephone, desktop computer, game console, handheld device) may also be considered electronic media.

Development and widespread use of computers and information technology have resulted in the emergence of what is called new media. It includes computers, information technology, communication networks and digital media. This has led to another process in mass communication called convergence. Convergence means coming together of many forms of media and other formats like printed text, photographs, films, recorded music or radio, television etc. Though it is hard to separate old media from new media the World Wide Web or internet has changed the way in which we communicate.

MASS MEDIA CHALLENGES The activities of the media of mass communication newspapers, T.V., radio and magazines the professional participants in which we shall collectively call "journalists" (because they deal with

things of a day) are vastly more prominent in society now, for good or ill, than ever before. Some identified problems of mass communication are: i. ii. iii. iv. v. Literacy rate Lack of qualified journalists Lack of freedom Bias, Censorship and Control Brown envelope syndrome

LITERACY RATE An initial major problem here is that in an era in which, as we have seen, a scientific understanding of social life is increasingly important, the education of the journalist remains predominantly literary. Very few scientifically educated men indeed ever take up journalism. (There is economic determination here: graduates in literature, languages, and the arts have fewer places to go than those in science, engineering or medicine.) Literary and scientific sense need have little correlation. Although comparisons may be odious it is commonly conceded that journalism in England tends to have better literary standards than in America, but its feeling and insight for the cultural values of science remains quite poor (Snow, 1959) or inferior. Since, unfortunately, it is true that the bulk of our population after school ends, reads no serious books (except paper back "best sellers") but turns only a tired eye on newspapers and T.V. and drifts in a jaded state to entertainment by the stage, this is serious.

LACK OF QUALIFIED JOURNALISTS Consequently, a second major problem in this area arises from the tendency of the young intellectual and the man in the street to turn to journalism as a convenient source of new values without realizing journalism's fundamental lack of qualification for that service. The highest art of journalism is surely to "hold the mirror up to nature" the nature of current society and its daily events. The task of deriving and analyzing moral values is increasingly a task for extensively organized social research institutes or, in an interim period the established churches of the revealed religions.

LACK OF PRESS FREEDOM

Everyone knows that the mass media do not confine themselves to transmission of fact. Even when they do not seek to create new values they actively use persuasive propaganda, either for political parties, or for the unconscious values in their personal background such as the essentially science-unsympathetic literary educational background cited above. Consequently, although every liberal rightly sided with the "freedom of the press" in the centuries preceding our own, when this was a bulwark of liberty against tyrannical governments or churches, a perceptive person must recognize that functions have changed. This freedom has nowadays the complexion of license, and needs sane controls. The questions that arise are essentially whether the journalist has a right to the "freedoms" (1) To garble the cultural message into sheer noise, i.e., to pander to the lowest denominator of taste for trivia, gossip, lewdness, violence, etc., just because this "pays." It has been recognized by every sane observer that the media are in fact a prey to every fad and fashion, every sentimentalism and every popular error of thought all expressed with a loud mouth. (2) To practice as a dispenser of authoritative information on matters beyond the daily news history, values, economics, psychology, sociology when the journalist's professional training obviously does not fit him in the least to do so, as countless "leading articles" easily reveal. (3) To "select" the information supplied (sheer "misrepresentation" of facts would of course be unthinkable). A cure for biased selection by requiring an obligatory "stratified sample" is not technically impossible, and without it virtually any direction of persuasion, even of critically intelligent people, is possible, by suitable selection of facts. Men in windowless dungeons can be made to believe that day is night. (4) To defame, without chance of redress, whoever disagrees with them. As to this last there are numerous shocking instances.

In Nigeria, a number of legal limitations have combined to whittle down the freedom of press. Buttressing this point, Nwodu (2006:161) notes that the draconian Decrees promulgated by various military regimes in the country which are still in force have continue to diminish the freedom of press in Nigeria. Nwodu further contends that absolute freedom does not exist. At

best, we can talk about degree of freedom since absolute freedom is hindered by a number of factors to include: Legal provision which provides for freedom of the press and at the same time denies it through some superiors clause. Security bodies/operatives which at times become overzealous to the extent of confiscating publications at will in pretext that such publications constitute threat to national security and interest. Political and economic problems which tend to stifle the operation of nongovernment media through denial of subsidies and other economic assistance; restriction of scope of distribution (for print media) and reach (for electronic media); hiking news reel and rate of importation thereto. Denial of public right to know by the government agents through over classification of government documents and papers and excessive limitation of mass media access to government information. Self and external censorships through mass media practitioners deliberate distortion of facts and publication of meaningless government handouts; brazen intimidation, harassment and manhandling of media practitioners; closure of mass media houses and of recent, the bombing of mass media houses by dissidents like the Boko Haram operations

BIAS. CENSORSHIP AND CONTROL More important than these sicknesses of bias, of posing as experts, and of vapidity, perhaps, is the fact that in many countries the press plays a vast confidence trick in claiming to be the bulwark of freedom while it tenaciously exercises a dictatorship of vulgarity. Unless and until a better system of control is devised there is no hope but for an increase in competence, taste and above all, conscience in the individual members of the profession. And no society or segment of society, not even a church, has been able to leave important matters to "individual conscience" without some machinery of lawful control. In as much as the mass media abut on the areas of education, moral direction and politics, they need to develop the controls which these already have. Absolute freedom, being absolute power, corrupts absolutely.

BROWN ENVELOPE SYNDROME

This problem is very unique to the Nigerian situation, it has become a norm of almost every journalist in the country to expect a brown envelope at ever official duty of news reportage and coverage they do. Stripped of all technicalities, brown envelope in the context of Nigerian journalism is a metaphor for bribery and corruption. According to Onyisi(1996:80) the concept, brown envelop is generally used to refer to the practice of offering and receiving gratifications in the form of gifts, drinks, food, sex or money in order to influence the judgment of a journalist. By implication brown envelope entails giving and receiving gratifications that influences to the negative, journalist sense of news value judgment. The gratification could come in the form of money, gift items, food or other unsolicited and/or unmerited favour. Today, brown envelope has been giving different names in different parts of Nigeria. In Lagos area for instance, it is called egunje. In the Eastern part of the country, it is called jenwu or kola. In some other parts of the country, it is called awufu. Regardless of the name or appeal, the fact is that cheap publicity seekers often offer journalists brown envelope to secure unmerited good press and or to massage their ego. According to Onyisi (1990:81) whenever cheap publicity seeker gives a journalist brown envelope, there is a tacit agreement that it is meant to make the reporter feature the story prominently to over-value the newsworthiness of the event, to overlook the deficiencies of the convener and, in some cases, to suppress the rival point of view.

As stated above, brown envelope is one of the major ethical problems that had and continues to weaken journalism practice in Nigeria. The ethical burdens imposed on journalism practice in Nigeria by brown envelope syndrome include but not limited to the fact that: It lowers media credibility and promotes lack of trust for the journalists. Accepting brown envelope certainly influences journalists sense of news value judgment and leads to brazen compromise and distortion of facts just to impress the giver. It robs negatively on publics right to know as what finally emerged as news of the day are tainted opinions of the giver of brown envelope rather than public interest-oriented news sifted and selected on the basis of objectivity, fairness and balance. It yields the media organization as cheap instrument of blackmail which not only robs negatively on media credibility, but also promote insecurity in the land.

Denies the poor who may have authentic information to share, access to the media since only those who can afford to pay their way gain limitless access to the media.

CONCLUSION The existence of free press and freedom of speech according to Nwachukwu (1999:298) is critical for fortifying the democratic process. By implication the democratic experience in Nigeria can only thrive and stabilize if the press enjoys greater freedom to function as the watchdog of the society. In doing this, the press must not be stifled with draconian laws, economic and political pressures and other forms of repressive means that deny the press free access to information. There is also a need to attend to the issue of brown envelope syndrome as Brown envelope is an endemic ethical problem confronting Nigerian journalists. It has retarded and is still retarding journalism development and practice in Nigeria. It is a corrupt ill wind that blows no one any good. If Nigerians must restore confidence and respect to journalism profession, then there is need for both Nigeria citizens and institutions/organizations to desist from offering brown envelope. There is also greater need for journalists to resist accepting such offer that influence news judgment over the years. Mass communication is expected to talk with the masses rather than to the masses,

RECOMMENDATIONS Any constructive reasoning in this area encounters an infantile emotional belief in the mass media, and the less intelligent liberals, that censorship is simply bad in all circumstances. But the fact is that nowhere in nature has a successful organism been built, and nowhere in history has a society survived, without an appropriate, intelligent application of inhibition and censorship Even on T.V., heroin is not permitted to be explicitly advertised, and rape and murder are supposedly not to be encouraged. In short, society has decided that it will exert censorship, and the only question is in what style and in what quantity it is optimum for social health. Actually, in periods where great issues are not at stake, the main need for control and censorship is of the trivial and trashy rather than the vicious. This brings us back to point one above the selection of news. Any scientist or educator, concerned to get society to consider vital issues, or any Humanist, concerned to get attention to good literature, has to admit that the effect of the mass media has been to trivialize. It argues that it can survive financially only by putting the sensational and the superficial rather than fundamental and progressive issues before the public. The reading of great books and the time normally available in other generations for individual thought, reflection, and the formation of independent opinion have inevitably suffered grievously with the crescendo of activity in the mass media. In aspiring to a true democracy, one cannot take lightly what is now happening to the mind of the average man. A survey shows that ninetysix percent of American homes have one or more television sets, and that the home set is turned on more than six hours a day (rather more than four hours for each occupant). Bronfenbrenner (2005) rightly concludes "the danger is not the behavior it produces, but the behavior it prevents." A survey of Mensa, whose members are in the top two percent of the population by intelligence, shows an altogether lower usage. But even the average man used to read some books. Leaving aside what three to six hours of television a day must do to his slim chance of to read, when does he have the time to ponder a little in his own way; to digest the confusion of calls upon his values and his vote; and to discover, the independence of thought which his forefathers undoubtedly possessed? Some hundreds of millions of citizens are, today, similarly screwed to T.V. sets, similarly designed to generate a prescribed uniformity of mind and an abdication of individual thinking. What this means for the processes of thought and judgment on which the healthy functioning of societies has hitherto depended, no one yet knows.

At best and as earlier pointed out, press in liberal democracies like American and of recent Nigeria, can only enjoy reasonable degree of freedom and not absolute freedom (Nwodu 2006:163). In order to ensure effective enthronement of press freedom there is, therefore, need to ensure that: 1. Draconian military decree like the 1984 Decree No. 4 dubbed public officers (protection Against False Accusation) Decree which are still in force are repelled. 2. Public servants should be encouraged to keep accurate records of government transactions and make government information readily available to the press upon application in line with provision of Freedom of Information Act. 3. Dubious licensing of channels of mass communication by government should be relaxed to encourage mass media pluralism and by extension, encourage the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas with less friction. 4. Journalists should be thorough in verifying their facts and dogged in reporting issues of public interest to respectively avoid abuse of the freedom of expression and self-censorship. 5. Governments should adopt legal means in bringing recalcitrant journalists/media organizations to book rather than the usual brazen use of force, intimidation, confiscation of published matters and proscription of media houses without trial.

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