Private Newspapers and Biased News Coverage in Ghana: A Comparative Content Analysis of the Daily Guide, the Enquirer, the Chronicle and the Daily Dispatch Newspapers.

Abstract

This research was undertaken with the aim of determining whether bias occurred in news coverage by private newspapers in Ghana. The study focused on the year 2014 which was the period just after the 2013 presidential election petition at the Supreme Court. This period was chosen because it was the era immediately after a major election dispute in Ghana and rivalry between the feuding parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was perceived to be high and the researcher thought that was a good time to test the level of sympathy of the chosen newspapers towards either of the two parties. Contents of 336 issues of the Daily Guide, The Enquirer, The Chronicle, and The Daily Dispatch newspapers, which were published from January to December 2014, were analyzed. It was discovered that the four newspapers published stories that were clearly biased towards one political party or the other when same editions of stories published by the newspapers were content analyzed. The assumption that the more sympathetic a newspaper is towards a particular political party the less likely it would be negative towards that party was supported by the data. The news articles demonstrated bias with respect to the various variables (Headline, word choice and tone, Photos, captions and camera angles) that were tested. No bias was shown in the placement of stories as all important stories were placed at the front pages of all four newspapers. Key words: Bias, Private newspapers, Partisan, News coverage.