EDITORS’ INTROSPECTIVE WEEKEND IN LAGOS

Last weekend US-sponsored workshop in Lagos provided editors with an opportunity for stocktaking, writes Bolaji Adebiyi

Obviously just getting its groove back, the Nigerian Guild of Editors was in its fine elements last weekend when it gathered 50 editors from the South-west of the country to do an assessment of the impact of the media on democracy. With the theme, Agenda-setting for Sustainable Democratic Culture, the sub-themes brought the town to the profession that was doing an introspection.

Among the Yoruba, it is said that no one is totally useless as even a bad child has its usefulness. This may well be true of Lai Mohammed, the nation’s garrulous minister of information and culture, whose onslaught on media freedom in recent times has reawakened not just the fighting spirit of journalism against the ever-present danger of official antagonism to free speech and press but also the need for some house cleaning.

Since his earlier in the year extension of aggression from social to the mainstream media, with his proxy legislative attempt to criminalise journalism through amendments to the Nigerian Press Council Act and the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission Act, the pen has been on its guard to ward off the absolutely unnecessary push to gag the fourth estate of the realm.

However, not a few wise ones in the media think that it is impossible for the gecko to get into the wall without a crack. For years now, stakeholders have complained about the falling standards of journalism practice particularly with regard to the accuracy of news and other ethical values of the profession. The complaints remained latent until social media activists went over the board with their reckless invasion of not just the privacy of private citizens but also audacious engagement in misinformation and disinformation that often times dance on the brink of national security breaches.

Pretending to be rising in the defence of the public, Mohammed and his cohorts in the federal legislature attempted severally to circumscribe free speech and expression through restrictive social media bills but were rebuffed by the civil society whose voice was amply amplified by the mainstream media. Rethinking this tactical error, the minister obviously thought that it would be necessary to shackle the much more organised mainstream first before taking on the weaker and disparate pestle-wielding children of anger, apologies to Rueben Abati.

Although forced into dormancy by the media’s counter-offensive, every discerning observer of the familiar cat-and-mouse game between the first and fourth estates know that it is a matter of time before the official aggression would be renewed. So, clearly aware of this implication of the tactical withdrawal of Mohammed and his legislative allies, media stakeholders urge a retreat to house cleaning of all unsightly cobwebs.

This was part of what the guild did last weekend, holding a town hall meeting with stakeholders, and a workshop for its top members in the South-west of the country. As it is the ways of the umbrella body of editors these days, both the audience and the resource persons were top notch. Sponsored by the US government through its embassy in Nigeria, the town hall meeting focuses on the citizens’ assessment of media performance in the effort to consolidate democracy in Nigeria.

Mary Leonard, the American ambassador, honoured the gathering of over 100, including students, academics and civil society activists. She spoke about the receding march of democracy in Africa and the role the media has to play in rolling back the trend. Of concern to her also was the declining ethical standards of the media, cautioning that journalists who accept gratification for the performance of their duty were lowering the credibility of the profession. She got a short response from Femi Falana, a silk and consistent agitator for good governance, who pointed out that democratic recession was a worldwide malaise, explaining that the rise of Trumpism in America holds no basic difference with the crisis of democratic succession in Africa. But the learned silk agreed with the ambassador on the gaps in the standards of journalism, noting that inaccuracy of reportage of political and security issues had become worrisome. His brother silk, Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika, while admitting the immense contributions of the media to the development of democratic culture, urged the pen to pay more attention to the balance between public and proprietary interests. Sylvester Akhaine-Odion, a trained journalist, now professor of political science, highlighted the complementary role of the media in the civil society agitations for the ouster of military rule, a role also well established by Ray Ekpu, a doyen of journalism, who moderated the meeting.

The common trend at the meeting was the need for the media to rejuvenate itself and pay more attention to the requirements of ethical standards of accuracy, fairness and balance. This, however, is a polite rebuke of the rising tendency of media descent into the arena so much so that it is being seen not as a tool for resolution but as a factor in the raging political and social crises in the country. This substantive issue was tackled by two journalism academics, Abigail Ogwezzy and Richard Ikiebe, both professors at the University of Lagos and Pan-Atlantic University respectively.

Ogwezzy, whose remit was to examine the role of the editor in enforcing and promoting public accountability, located the descent in the economic struggles of the media and its journalists to survive. This, she pointed out, had made both become cosy with the very institutions they were constitutionally bound to hold accountable. “The need for media ethics rises as news reporting becomes driven more and more by the free market rather than the truth,” she said in an apparent response to the growing commercialisation of news. Ikiebe, a journalist who practised for some time before veering into academics, was more pungent in his critique of the media whose mingling with politics and social strife, he explained, was historical. “The country’s press, unfortunately, and inexplicably too, have pitched up their tents with this or that tribal war crier,” he said, quoting with concurrence a 1965 editorial of the Nigerian Tribune, adding: “[The] principle of national unity has been sacrificed on the altar of petty tribal gods.”

This essential rebuke of the media set forth a rich debate on not only the necessity for a regulatory framework that would pull it out of the arena of political and social conflicts but also how that would come about. Should the media continue to self-regulate or does it need an external push or a combination of both? There is yet a consensus.

Adebiyi, managing editor of THISDAY Newspapers, writes from bolaji.adebiyi@thisdayonline.com