ABSTRACT
The role of media in a democratic system has been widely debated. In recent times, media has been subject to a lot of criticism for the manner in which they have disregarded their obligation to social responsibility. The social responsibilities expected from media in the public sphere were deeply grounded with the acceptance of media as the fourth estate. Today, the media enmeshed in activities that compromised their social responsibilities. This paper therefore examines the extent to which the Nigerian media have been compromised, particularly focusing on the ownership structure and its threat to national development. This paper adopted the qualitative research design in collecting data with strong reliance on secondary sources including journals, books, newspapers and the internet. The content analysis was employed in analyzing data collected while structural-functionalism theory constitutes the framework for our analysis. The paper concludes that most of the media in Nigeria have been compromised and failed in their social responsibility given the unreasonable influence of ownership of both public and private media outfits on their activities, and to that extent constituted a challenge to national development. The study therefore recommends among other that Nigerian government should make laws that will forbids media outfits from deliberately falsifying information aimed at misleading the general public.
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