It was against the background of attempting to demystify and explicate the socio-political constraints that inhibit media practices and professionalism in Nigeria that this conceptual research was undertaken. The paper maintains the position that no society is independent of certain constraining factors imposed upon it by social and political conditions, situations, circumstances or environments. The Authoritarian Media Theory was set as the theoretical base for this paper. The theory explicated the idea that there are certain restraining, constraining or inhibiting factors exerting considerable pressures and forces on the media, media institutions, media industry, and media practitioners, to the extent that they affect and 'colour' media practices, contents, and professionalism. The socio-political constraining forces the authors identified as exerting excessive pressures on media practices and professionalism in Nigeria include the political economy of Nigerian journalism; the murky nature of Nigerian political culture; governance-induced constraints; corruption-induced constraints; financial-induced constraints; social insecurity; outdated communication education curricula; ethnicity & ethnocentrism; gender-related constraints; heterogeneous population; urbanisation and press regulation. These socio-political constraints, in the estimation of the authors, limit media practices and professionalism as a result of the level of media interaction, interdependence, reliance, and exchange with social and political structures within the society they operate. It is maintained in the paper that as the media-society interaction, interdependence, reliance, and exchange continue unabated and become even mutually entrenched, media activities, practices, operations, and functions also become inversely influenced by the socio-political factors inherent in society which makes a constant attempt to condition media practices in line with their whims and caprices.
Vol. 1, No 1, pp. 167-181.