Coverage of reproductive health issues in Nigerian newspapers

Abstract

Newspaper as one of the channels of media is useful in passing information to the public and various stakeholders on several issues due to its wide coverage. This study was carried out to investigate the coverage of reproductive health issues in selected newspapers in Nigeria. Three Nigerian newspapers were selected for the study namely: Punch, Vanguard and The Nation. Two days of the week and a weekend were purposively selected for this study and a total of 149 news articles were used for the study. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentage) and inferential (Analysis of Variance) statistics at p< 0.05. Results revealed that sex education (38.9%) and maternal health (42.3%) were mostly reported. Reproductive
health experts (50.3%) were the highest source quoted across the newspapers followed by news reporters (26.2%). The highest space allotted to reproductive health issues was 68-746sq.cm with 40.3%. The bulk of reproductive health issues were placed on other pages (80.5%) of the newspapers which are of less prominence to the audience. There was a significant difference in the spaces allotted to reproductive health issues (F= 3.041, p= 0.001) across newspapers. It is pertinent for Nigerian newspaper industry to improve the coverage of reproductive health issues and increase the space allotted to the issue to enhance visibility and effective communication to the audience.