Sapientia Global Journal of Arts, Humanities and Development Studies (SGOJAHDS), Vol.4 No.1 March, 2021; p.g. 165 – 175; ISSN: 2695- 2319 (Print); ISSN: 2695-2327 (Online) PRINT MEDIA AND THE REPORTAGE OF CORRUPTION CASES IN NIGERIA … 165 PRINT MEDIA AND THE REPORTAGE OF CORRUPTION CASES IN NIGERIA: INADEQUACY OF CONTENT ANALYSIS APPROACH IDEHEN, ROOSEVELT OSAZENAYE. Department of International Relations and Strategic Studies Igbinedion University, Okada idehen_roosevelt@yahoo.com, idehen.roosevelt@iuokada.edu.ng Phone: +2348060685087, +2348055116517 & ERIBO, OMOLE MARIAT Federal Polytechnic Auchi mariatedox@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Over the years, newspapers have influenced politics, shaped culture, played important roles in businesses, served as research materials and affected the daily lives of people. Consequently, this paper looks at how reliable newspaper content is as a source of information for research purposes. To achieve this, this paper examines four national dailies in Nigeria-ThisDay, The Guardian, The Vanguard and The Punch, from October 1 to 31, 2017; analyzing how the newspapers covered some corruption cases involving Mrs. Patience Jonathan, Mrs. Diezani Alison- Madueke, Col. Sambo Dasuki, retd. and Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina for a period of one month. The main finding in this paper is that the four dailies only focused on corruption as misappropriation of funds and money laundering, not discussing other aspects of corruption like extortion, favouritism etc. Based on the findings, the researcher concludes that newspaper content is not the most reliable source of information for research because of sensationalism, prejudice and willful biases in reportage. The researcher recommends that journalists should thoroughly research their subjects of discussion before publishing so as to present balanced and detailed reports on which researchers can base their studies. Keywords: Reportage, Corruption, Biases, Content, Sensationalism. Introduction The quest for a normative definition and content characterization of news, especially in tabloids has been a recurring theme in scholarly discourse (Kerunga et al., 2020; Chama, 2017). While hard news stories have become the major characterizing feature of professional journalism, soft news mostly reside in sensational/tabloid journalism. As a result, values such as proximity, impact, oddity, and relevance, tend to be given less importance (Muchangwe and Gondwe, 2020; Bunce et al., 2016).