Media and ethical issues in terrorism reporting and the security implication in Nigeria

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the relationship between media reporting and violent extremism to explain the ethical and security issues emanating from it in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on security and ethical literature, while a multimethod approach consisting of in-depth and focus group interviews was used. Content analysis was also relied upon from the interviews granted by media experts on terrorism, security and ethics. Findings Findings revealed that journalists are facing problems in areas of freedom of expression, framing, content selection and personal security. Again, this paper opines that elements of public awareness and issues of relevance also push the media to excessive reporting in which ethics and security must stand to play a restraining role. Research limitations/implications The first limitation of this paper is the inability to interview some terrorists and know their reaction to mass media reporting on their activities because nobody is ready to own up that he is a terrorist and to point to an individual as a terrorist is a dangerous phenomenon. Again, not all reporters are ready for interviews because of the fact that they are not prepared for the academic exercise but rather for assignments that can yield fat money such as selling secret information to those who can buy them with huge amounts of money like the politicians. Practical implications There is a threat to life on both sides of the government and terrorists. Favoring one side in their report is an offense from another side. There is also a violation of their human rights in freedom of speech as a result of the political situation in Nigeria where the government is faced with insecurity that hinders media from freedom of the press to publish reports. Moreover, where the ethical issue is suppressed, it makes the government unpopular all over the world because of the lack of press freedom. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is novel as being the first of its kind where media experts are involved in research attempts on media reporting and violent extremism in relation to security and ethical issues in Nigeria.