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Electoral Campaign and Hate Speech in Print Media: A Case Study of January 19, 2015 Punch Advert

 BASSEY MOSES

The hallmark of advanced democracies all over the world is the fact that the incumbent has no influence over the elections as well as no advantage over other contestants. The campaign for the 2015 presidential election will go down in as one of the most tension-laden in the political history of Nigeria. The use of Hate speech before, during and after the general election became notorious to an extent that one would think that Nigeria might witness another civil war. The paper did an analysis of the January, 19th 2005 advert on The Punch Newspaper. The research design adopted was the Content Analysis. The paper discovered that the advert should not have been allowed because it promoted hate speech and was against the ethics of Nigeria Press Council. The study therefore concluded that the advert was inimical to democracy and against the ethics of journalism. It recommended that the media organisation should make deliberate efforts to rightly inform the people by way of their editorial policy as contained in Sections 22 and 39 of the 1999 Constitution.