Published Article

ABSTRACT

This paper was conceived to evaluate how media construction of reality could affect society’s evaluation of same. The main objective of this paper was to determine the extent NTA’s news at nine broadcasts was biased during the 2007 election circle which also formed the Research question. It is a content analysis with the news, advertisement, announcements and endorsement as the units of analysis categorized for Bias to determine the news frame. The sample was 46 news episodes, systematically drawn from a possible population of 365 of the election year. Every day of the week was represented. An interval of eight days was chosen starting from the first day of May 2006 to the last day of April 2007 which was the month of the election. Apart from the month of February 2007, which yielded 3 samples, every other month within the period under study had at least four samples each. This is against the background that Sundays are usually abridged versions because of the Newsline. The study revealed that NTA was structurally Biased in its coverage of the 2007 Election and concluded that Government influence over the NTA was responsible.