MEDIA WORKERS AND THE COVERAGE OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN NIGERIA: A STUDY OF PRINT MEDIA

Abstract

The mass media and its workers have come to occupy strategic position in the society. This is due to the fact that they are custodians of information, hence they have considerable access to information and they are expected to disseminate such for public consumption. Whatever they decide to do with these, will go a long way in determining the direction in which a society moves, since people often act on the basis of information available to them. This study sought to explain media coverage of industrial relations particularly from the premise of the challenges posed by the dual identity of media workers as professionals as well as union members. The Marxist school of thought and the liberal democratic tradition approaches were adopted to help us understand if industrial relations matters are only reported during crisis while many achievements of workers are left unknown. The findings revealed amongst others that print media coverage is dependent of people‟s opinion and outlook in a given industrial relations situation. The study concluded that, media workers, irrespective of their location within the job hierarchy are as vulnerable within the employment relationship as workers in other industries. Amongst the recommendations was that there is need for media workers not to allow themselves to be used against their own professional interests while discharging their duties. This study encompasses both primary and secondary data.