EVALUATION OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE MEDIA IN SUSTAINING EDITORIAL INDEPENDENCE IN JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Social responsibility theory was developed to checkmate the excesses – sensationalism and commercialism, political imbalance and monopoly tendencies of libertarian theory as one of the classical normative theories of the media: authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility and soviet communist. This is as a result of the failure of the free-market of ideas of libertarianism to guarantee press freedom and did not yield the expected benefits to the society. There are many expectations from the media in the service of the society and expectedly media is to serve the public interest, thus this call for media accountability. This work examined editorial the contradictory role of editorial independence and social responsibility of journalists and journalism practice in Nigeria which is built on professional accountability. The relationship between the social responsibility, editorial independence and the Nigerian society is conflicting as the study align with other studies that ownership pattern, nature of political system, ownership influence, censorship, poor remuneration and poor welfares, and need to survive are societal clogs that undermine social responsibility in practicing journalism in Nigerian. For media to be socially responsible in Nigeria all the clogs must be removed. If society continually affect journalism negatively it will be difficult for the journalists to be responsible.