A Lagos-based communications and reputation management agency, Carpe Diem Limited, has emphasised the need to put into place ethical infrastructure for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Nigeria’s media industry.

It also called for special incentives for the industry to tackle the funding crisis and other challenges faced by practitioners and media firms.

The firm made the recommendations in its new report on the future of Media and PR Collaboration in Nigeria’, Marking World Press Freedom Day 2026. The intelligence report draws on responses from journalists across 17 media organisations, revealing five structural findings that challenge how Nigeria’s communications industry engages with the press.

The report titled: ‘The Future of Media and PR collaboration in Nigeria’ is anchored in structured responses from working journalists and media practitioners across print, digital, broadcast, and independent platforms in Nigeria, and is combined with the most current global data on press freedom, institutional trust, AI adoption in newsrooms, and media economics.

The report revealed that AI has entered Nigerian newsrooms, but the ethical infrastructure has not kept pace, adding that the majority of practitioners use AI tools for research, editing, transcription, and writing assistance.

However, it states that practitioners’ concerns are consistent and include laziness, the erosion of originality, and the growing potential for AI to serve disinformation at scale.
According to the report, only 12 percent of audiences globally are comfortable with news made entirely by Artificial Intelligence.

“The funding crisis is the story behind the stories. Financial fragility is not a background condition in Nigerian journalism; it is the primary operating reality. The RSF 2026 World Press Freedom Index, published two days before this report, ranks Nigeria 112th out of 180 countries, still in the “difficult” category despite a ten-place improvement in 2025.

Social media has restructured distribution without resolving the economic problem. Nigeria’s 107 million internet users represent a vast audience, but audience scale has not translated into media sustainability. Influencers and journalists operate in different ecosystems, not competing ones. Professional journalism is distinguished by verification, editorial accountability, and objectivity. Influencers are not held to equivalent standards,” the report said.

The report noted that the media-PR relationship is transactional when it should be structural, adding that most actionable finding in the report is what journalists want from communications professionals, which include earlier engagement, tailored pitches that demonstrate genuine knowledge of their beat, transparency about sponsored content, and relationship-building that happens before either side needs anything from the other.

The Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Carpe Diem Solutions Limited, Edward Israel-Ayide, said: “We publish this report not as a critique of either industry, but as an honest accounting of where both stand and what each owes the other.

Nigeria’s media ecosystem is more resilient than it is often credited with. The journalists represented here are talented, committed, and clear-eyed about the conditions in which they work. They deserve communications partners who meet that standard. This report is our invitation to the industry to begin the conversation.”

Data from the report revealed that 84 per cent of Nigerians worry about distinguishing real from fake news online, the highest rate among countries surveyed globally according to Reuters Institute DNR while Nigeria’s income-based trust gap in media, an all-time high that has doubled since 2022.

“Only 12 per cent of global audiences are comfortable with news produced entirely by AI, yet Nigerian newsrooms are adopting AI tools without the ethical guardrails that better-resourced newsrooms can draw on. 160 out of 180 countries globally are struggling with financially unstable media outlets according to Reporters Without Borders 2026,” it said.