THE NIGERIA PRESS AND ETHICS OF JOURNALISM PROFESSION (A STUDY OF THE PUNCH NEWSPAPERS)

The study was basically developed to appraise the Nigeria Press and Ethics of Journalism Profession with a case Study of the Punch Newspaper especially on regular warning to members of the public not to offer bribes to its journalists. The objective was to discover whether the Punch newspaper uphold ethical standards like fairness, accuracy, balance, rejection of brown envelope, non disclosure of source of vital information and many others in their daily assignment or not. Ethical standard in journalism was developed to ensure good conduct and accord respect for journalism and practitioners. Findings shows that the Punch newspaper do uphold ethical standard in its day to day activities with 67% of the respondents attested to this fact. The research was divided into five chapters, Chapter one of the study based on the background of the study, problem statement, research questions, significance of the study, scope of the study, and definition of the terms. Chapter two, of the study contains the review of literature with references to some scholarly written work on the subject matter. Survey method was adopted and questionnaires were administered. Simple random sampling technique was also adopted to select respondents. Data analysis and interpretations of findings done with frequency and percentage method of data analysis was used. It is recommended that Media houses should increase the salary of their workers and paid them on time while regular allowance should be made available for them. Trainings and workshops are to be organized regularly to retrain and re-orientate their workers.