Negative Developments • • • • • • • Journalists remained a major target of violence, with some being either assassinated or kidnapped. The police did little to unravel the mystery surrounding the assassination of three journalists on the same day in April 2010. The welfare of journalists is still deplorable. There are still no Collective Bargain Agreements in the sector and journalists continue to receive very low pay. Many journalists have gone for many months without pay. Journalists of some private media were owed up to ten months’ in salary arrears. A huge gap continues to exist between the quality of formal training, and industry-needs. Journalism schools were understaffed, underequipped and often failed to meet basic requirements for accreditation. Newspapers experienced a continued decline in circulation, resulting from low advertising revenue and the high cost of production. The circulation of the country’s leading magazine, News Watch, which used to be about a million when it launched is down to about 40,000. Newspapers, which had individual print-runs of between 500,000 to 800,000 some 10 years ago have struggled with a combined print-run of less than 500,000. Many were unable to sell even 10,000 copies per issue. State-owned newspapers such as Chronicles, Nigerian Statesman, and Observer were shut down. Governors and other politicians opened their own media houses to compete with underfunded state media. Even though some progress was made in following due process in dealing with media offenses, the government used its overbearing powers to close Channels TV after it reported that late President Yar’ Adua was contemplating to resign for health reasons. The state broadcaster continued to be generally biased in its reporting for the 2011 elections. It gave more air time to the ruling party and sometimes refused to run paid campaign adverts from opposition parties What kinds of activities are needed over the next two years? • Journalists’ welfare continues to be the biggest threat to the development of professional journalism in Nigeria. All efforts to provide training and other support to the industry are wasted unless the underlying problems of low pay and poor working conditions are addressed. The panellists agreed that this was an area where urgent action was needed through continued advocacy for better working conditions for journalists. AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER NIGERIA 2011 57