Publisher's Synopsis
In this study Dulue Mbachu examines Nigeria's place in global news flow, using foreign news reporting by two Lagos newspapers to illustrate the dependence of local news media on Western news organizations for knowledge of what happens in the rest of the world. It shows that foreign news coverage depends largely on reporting provided by leading Western news agencies. The study found that much of the foreign news was about the United States and leading Western European countries. Even when Nigerian newspapers covered their immediate region of Africa and other non-Western parts of the world, the sources were often the same leading news agencies from the West. The image of the world the newspapers convey to their readers is essentially that created by the dominant Western news agencies. The constructs made by these agencies are not value-free but often correspond to their own interests, that of their countries or the ideologies to which they subscribe in their definition of the world.
