This baseline study of gatekeeping in the Nigerian press follows the tradition of White (1950) and Swider (1967) and reveals that as a concept, gatekeeping holds great promise in African mass communication research. It used a survey research method to collect data from 21 senior reporters and editors in four Nigerian newspapers and found that: (1) corporate philosophies and policies of newspaper organizations affect gatekeeping "operations without distinction as to whether the newspaper was privately or government owned; (2) journalists working in privately-owned newspapers reported giving less consideration to ownership factors in their selection of news; and (3) that prejudice and personal preferences are played down considerably by the journalists.
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