Abstract

Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was sworn-in on 29th May, 2011 amidst optimism for developing Nigeria because of the electoral promises he made during campaigns which his administration tagged ‘transformation agenda’. The agenda was run as a medium term development plan of 5 years from June, 2011- May, 2015 with 18 key sectors to which attention was paid in a bid to make Nigeria one of the twenty economies of the world. This study, therefore, examined the press coverage of the transformation agenda in the Nigerian press with particular reference to the Daily Trust and Thisday newspapers. The study explored the extent to which the Nigerian press reported stories on the transformation agenda, direction of the coverage and quantum of spot and investigative stories. The researcher used quantitative content analysis in arriving at the findings while composite-week approach as a variation of systematic random sampling technique was used in selecting 480 editions as sample. The study was guided by the development media theory. The research found that, the two newspapers studied had fairly covered transformation agenda in a more neutral way, but, investigative reportage was found to be lacking or minimal as most sources of stories remain government officials.

Key Words: Transformation Agenda, Goodluck Jonathan, Nigerian Newspapers, Daily Trust, Thisday.

____________

*Auwalu Rabilu is a Monitoring Officer, Directorate of Broadcast Monitoring, National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Nigeria.

^JCMRJournal of Communication and Media Research, Vol. 9, No. 1, April  2017, 149 – 162