Abstract

News commentaries are some of the major means of communicating ideas to the public through both the print and electronic media. By a dexterous use of language, writers of news commentaries freely select subject matters whose topicality is relevant to the events, ideas and lifestyles of the moment. For the purpose of this study, the medium of news commentary is conceptualized as a sub-genre of literature, and in this light, various thematic pre-occupation that border on societal malaise and negative practices encapsulated by this medium shall be highlighted with a view to correcting them. By selecting data from a pool of commentaries with varied topics and themes, this paper underscores the functionality of news commentaries as potent instruments for arousing the consciousness of the citizenry about abnormalities in their society. More so, relating themes in these news commentaries with those in fiction (creative works) is expected to be the point of intersection between literature and the news media in this study. Sociological approach to literary criticism is adopted as the theoretical framework since news commentaries as sub-genre of literature function in a society inhabited and affected by the actions of human beings.

Keywords

NewsCommentariesPovertyCorruptionMigration

Published in: Nsibidi:AE-FUNAI Journal of Humanities ( Volume: 1 , Issue: 1 , October 2018)

Page(s): 11 - 30

Date of Publication: October 2018

ISSN Information: 1596-5428