The study was conducted to explore the extent of the coverage of development issues onrnEthiopian Radioâ€™s evening 8:00 Pm news. Moreover, the research tried to examine thernpriority Radio Ethiopia gives to development issues the chief goal of the country. Since itrnhas a large audience, a wide coverage, and is aired daily, Ethiopian Radio evening 8:00rnPm news was purposely selected.rnTo assess the main objectives of the projects, the researcher employed content analysis torngather quantitative data. To develop and support this data and to arrive at arncomprehensive conclusion, interviews were conducted with journalists and other relevantrnbodies. The data obtained through interviews were discussed and analyzed qualitatively.rnThe researcher selected a sample of a month, from April 9 to May 8, 2007. The newsrnitemsâ€™ content was categorized into different groups in a bid to answer the researchrnquestions. One of the research questions was to what extent radio covers ruralrndevelopment activities.rnFor the conceptual frame work, different development theories and the Ethiopianrndevelopment plan were briefly reviewed. Since the government development plan heavilyrndepends on the concept of Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI),rnwhich gives emphasis to rural development, it will be taken as a subject of the study. It isrnthe assumption of the research project that media are a promoter and supporter of therndevelopment activities of the country and that journalists have to set agenda purposely forrnthe salient issues. Hence agenda setting theory was used as a central theoryrnThe findings of the research revealed that Ethiopian Radio as an agenda setter was ratherrnweak. Rural development news items got relatively little coverage and frequencyrndistribution during the selected period of a month.rnThe research paper argued that rural development as a national agenda could get betterrncoverage and frequency.