APPRAISAL OF MASS MEDIA SURVEILLANCE FUNCTIONS IN COMBATING INSECURITY IN IMO STATE

The role of the media can never be overlooked in any political system. The role is more compounded in a conflict situation when the media must provide information on the crisis. The paper looked into the various roles of the media in a system that is dominated by security challenges The use of content analysis of secondary sources from published books, journals, efficial documents, newspapers and magazines was employed in this work. The paper makes a conceptual clarification of the concepts of mass media and security. The paper discussed security situation in Nigeria and the role being played by the media. The paper concludes that respective of the security threat to the lives of the media practitioners, the media must perform its duties without fear or favour The paper finally makes some recommendations which include freedom of the press must be guaranteed to avoid intimidation, security personnel should work with the media to protect them against security risk, the media should guide against publishing stories that can heat up the polity and the freedom of information act should be utilized