INTRODUCTION
1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
This in balance of news flow is a complex and varied phenomenon which can occur in different forms and a exists in all media the news paper, radio film and television.
Communication is a part of the general development process that provides the needed between planners and their goals. No nation can survive without workable information channels that allows in and out passage of adequate flow of information to the various part of the effectiveness of information lies in its getting to the recipients in proper from.
Knowing if there is the existence of any information imbalance between our rural and urban population is of great importance for it depends on the trend of our study.
Communication facilities are often inadequate within developing countries due to lack of finance and other resources and the few that are readily available concentrates more on the urban areas at the expense or detriment of the rural areas. The distribution of communication facilities does not provide the information needs of the people in Nigeria as well as most third world countries and a few developed countries.
The unbalance of information flow between the urban areas and the rural areas seems like an information flow between the rural majority and the urban majority in the sense that new flow from the development urban area to the undeveloped rural areas.
According to Humphrey Nwosu; “people living in urban areas have more dependable infrastructure facilities than their counter parts in the rural areas.
Until recently the circulation of newspapers was an obligation fulfilled only in the township”.
Never the less, rural poverty regrettably frustrates what should other wise have been a land able achievement of modern technology.
Illiteracy completed the vicious circle started poverty and lack of infrastructure facilities as a large proportion of our rural population are prevented from information flow by illiteracy and this has reduced the rural people to a state of passive receivers of information put out by a few people.
As we pointed out earlier the unbalance of news flow exists at all levels in all countries. At the transnational level news flow from the industrialized countries to the third world countries. The western news agencies collect the over whelming bulk of world news to impose western attitudes on the development countries.
Opubor and Nwuuneli quoted that the managing director of this day News paper once complained that;
“while he has detailed knowledge of foreign place and people such as minister, other personalities and even crooks through flowing information gotten from international news agencies he knows very little about his own neighbors and neighbor hood in Africa and other third world countries.
Apart from the one way flow of information the little news on the third world is often distorted and centered on crisis. The third world countries always complain that the bulk of information they receive don’t serve their actual information needs because the information are neither irrelevant or destructive to their culture, besides news on famines wars, crisis ridicules them as being primitive. In other w worlds, it is only the odd events from the third world countries that qualified as new events to western media.
A foreign correspondent said of all when he said or rather asked;
“why the hell should anyone but a specialist be interested in the Congo when there is no crisis there ?”
The developing countries are not happy with this unbalance. The accumulated anger surface during the oil boom of the 1970’s when they found a strong economic bargaining power in oil and they advocated for a balance in the flow of information based on population distribution and national aspiration of cultural independence.
This call generated debates conference and symposium under the auspices of the UNESCO and the non-aligned countries. These resulted in the setting up of the international commission for the study of communication problem in 1977 under the chairmanship of the late Mr. Sean Mac Bride and this commission recommended that the movement for a new world information and communication (NWICO) should replace the old order characterized by unbalance and distortion.
From the foregoing, it is clear that there is the existence of the unbalance flow of information in the urban and rural area in Nigeria.
It is against this background out lined above that this study becomes imperative. For the purpose of the study, two Nigeria New papers THIS DAY and CHAMPION were chosen.