GENDER BIAS IN PRINT MEDIA REPORTAGE OF BABY FACTORY PHENOMENON IN SOUTH-EASTERN NIGERIA

In many African societies, a premium is placed on having biological children as proof of fertility. Couples unable to reproduce sometimes “harvest” babies from “baby factory” a term coined by the Nigerian media as a subset of child trafficking. Existing literature have examined baby factory practices and its causes with little attention paid to the gender context of the media reportage. This study, therefore, investigated the gender nuances in the print media reportage of baby factory in southeastern Nigeria and the responses of journalists toward the phenomenon. The Agenda Setting theory provided the framework, while descriptive design was adopted. Reports on baby factory were generated from The Sun, The Punch and Nigerian Tribune newspapers from January to June, 2014 when reportage on baby factory expanded. Key informant interviews were conducted with the three newspapers editors and nine reporters (non-crime) journalists. Two Focus Group Discussions were conducted with newspaper editors, correspondents from a crime security association, Indepth Interview was conducted with Igbo men and women. Data were thematically and content-analysed. Despite accounts showing both male and female involvement in the baby factory in south-eastern Nigeria, the news, alongside men demonstrate bias against women by criminalizing women depicting baby factory as a female crime while the males who caused these women to become pregnant and then abandoned themor husbands abandoning their “barren” wives are not criminalised in the reports. The journalists relied on stories, which come from the police parade and press releases rather than an investigation, demonstrate a lack of a deliberate gender lens in the reporting and instead represent the kind of shoddy news that the police provide to the media a situation the journalists blamed on the secretive nature of the phenomenon. Bias stems from the paper barely examining the motivation behind women’s involvement in baby factories. The women expressed empathy for the arrested female suspects because she sees the pregnant woman’s involvement as a way to give up the child after being abandoned and as a way to support her desire to have children in order to stay married. The media should report more on baby factory menace as a national crisis instead of projecting the phenomenon as a female crime. The media should report more on baby factory menace as a national crisis instead of projecting the phenomenon as a female crime.