An Appraisal on Ethical conduct of Journalists in Reporting Political Defections in Rivers State

Abstract

This study appraised the ethical conduct of journalists in reporting political defections in Rivers State. The paper seeks to find out how the journalists in Rivers State have managed to stay afloat in the troubled political waters of political defections in Rivers State bearing in mind that most of the media houses are owned by the politicians who have defected to other political parties to continue their political sojourn. Also, the study considers the issue of their ethical conduct in the miasma of intervening variables on the line of duty. The main objective of the study is to critically examine whether the scripting of defection stories by journalists in Rivers State adhere to a high sense of moral responsibility and to investigate what factors influence the ethical conduct of journalists in Rivers State. To achieve this, a survey design was adopted and a total of 40 respondents were drawn from the pool of registered journalists in Rivers State which comprises of Business day, Sun, Guardian, Punch, Authority, Newspapers and Rythnm 93.7FM amongst others amongst others. Three questions which bordered on moral responsibility of journalists, adherence to ethical codes of the journalism profession and the factors contributory to the adherence to the ethical codes were posed. Data was gathered through the use of questionaires and analysed using the weighted mean scores on a five point Likert Scale. The findings proved that the journalists were adhering to the professional ethics in their reportage of political defections and this was largely because of the effective supervision by the NUJ among others. It was recommended that the NUJ goes a step further in improving the work environment of journalists as a way of encouraging sustainability of such ethical conduct among other things