Introduction
Gentlemen of the Press, let me firstly thank you profusely for considering me fit and eligible to stand before you today to present what I will prefer to call an engagement, rather than a lecture, in commemoration of your week. I consider my choice as a great honour because there are thousands of my equals you could have opted for rather than me. I will therefore be ever grateful for giving me this opportunity, privilege and honour not only to be part of your celebration today, but also to generate new knowledge or rekindle the existing knowledge you have about your journalistic practice. I pray that God Almighty will bless every individual that is instrumental to the decision of nominating me for this engagement.
As an academic, there is the tempting tendency for me to take this opportunity as an avenue to pontificate with academic theories and concepts. But because I have been able to consider this lecture as an engagement, I will constrain myself from delving too deeply into academic nuances of the topic you have asked me to discuss with you today. Rather, I will make the engagement so relational so as to benefit all of you that I am privileged to stand before today. To this end, I see this engagement as a form of re-training workshop from which I expect every individual of my audience to take something vital that can build your reportorial capacity and skills.
Let me quickly call your attention to the topic of this engagement. It is a combination of the two forms of the topics I received in preparation for this engagement. Fortunately for me, I understood the two legs of the topic the same way. We cannot talk about the safety and security as a priority for journalist during elections without talking about how they should cover or report elections. To this end, my engagement here today focuses on how best we should cover the 2023 elections in a way that will guarantee the security of the nation as well as our own safety.
Security Situation in the Country
In order to underscore the importance of acquiring and imbibing a special restructured way of reporting 2023 elections that will guarantee the security of our nation and safety of our lives, as journalists, we need to appreciate the terrible and unabated security challenges our country has been contending with for more than ten years, and which has been seriously threatening the continual existence of the country. It is a common knowledge that Nigeria, in recent times, has witnessed an upsurge in the level of insecurity arising from insurgency, ethnic clashes, ethno religious violence, herder-farmers clashes, kidnapping, banditry, assassinations, murder, gender-based violence, militancy, separatist violence, violent cultism even in our neighbourhoods, and bomb explosions. These have led to loss of numerous lives and property. They have indeed generated an atmosphere of social tension and palpable panic that has enveloped the polity so much that we all feel unsafe whether we are on a journey or even when we are in what we should consider safe shelter of our homes. We all sleep in our homes with one eye closed, while we have our hearts in our hands while we are outside our homes. Security in Nigeria has deteriorated so much that in 2019, the country was ranked 148th out of 163 countries with respect to global peace (Global Peace Index, 2019).
The security challenges are becoming so profound in recent times as a result of the massive proliferation of small arms and light weapons across the country. A recent report from SBM Intelligence established that “the number of small arms in circulation in Nigeria, in the hands of civilian non-state actors, is estimated at 6,145,000, while the armed forces and law enforcement collectively account for 586,600 firearms,” The report further established that “illegal weapons factories have been discovered in towns such as Enugu and Calabar, and it is now difficult to estimate the volume of locally manufactured weapons produced in Southern region of the country,” According to Chuma-Okoro (2011), there is presently lack of capacity and strong legal or effective institutional frameworks to regulate Small Arms and Light Weapons, and to combat the phenomenon of SALW proliferation in Nigeria, in spite of the recent passing of the bill that seeks to establish the National Commission for the Coordination and Control of the Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons.
In 2021, the police said at least 1,889 weapons and 52, 577 rounds of live ammunition were recovered between January and December, 2021. This could have geometrically increased if we consider the recent agitations from different quarters that government should allow individuals to carry arms for self-defence against all sorts of criminals who are wrecking security havoc on the polity.
As some scholars (Nte, 2011) postulated, the major stimulant for the proliferation of small arms and light weapons in Nigeria is elections such that locally fabricated and imported pistols, and a range of assault riffles, are now being used by political thugs. In other words, the goals of political violence have been shifting from traditional instruments – matches, clubs and knives – to small arms, such as locally fabricated and imported pistols, and a range of assault rifles, which they discriminately use for both offensive and defensive purposes. With these facts, we can now see why we, as journalists, are seriously endangered within the volatile imperilled psyche of the Nigeria environment.
The alarming figures on the casualties, those that have fallen victim, of the security problems in the country, will definitely give us all sore head because the figures are terrifying. One thousand, seven hundred and forty-three Nigerians were reported killed in the first quarter of 2022 owing to insecurity, according to the data sourced and analysed by The Cable Index. The figure surpasses the number of civilians reportedly killed in the first month of Russia-Ukraine war. The Nigeria Security Tracker, on the other hand, established that at least 2,968 people were killed while 1, 484 were abducted in Nigeria from January to March of this year (2022). An estimated 35,000 people have been killed and over 3 million people displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-east of the country in the last five to six years. Similarly, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) have similarly killed scores of thousand in the South-east of the country with their ferocious armed attacks on people. The assassination attempt on Senator Andy Uba last month allegedly by this group is a testimony of how unsafe we are in this country. Thus, another report has frighteningly established that at least 7,222 Nigerians have been killed and 3,823 abducted as the country witnessed 2, 840 incidents of insecurity between January 1 and July 29, 2022. This, no doubt, is scary.
Security experts have affirmed that the insecurity in the country is already getting out of hand. According to them, with the recent happenings, there is fire on the mountain and that we are gradually sliding into a similar situation in Somalia where there will be a total breakdown of law and order. That the security situation is becoming frightening in Kwara state as well is not in doubt. Kidnapping and abduction are on the rise in our state here, too. Even traditional rulers are not left out in the daring and dastard acts of kidnappers and abductors.
Scholars ( Alao, 2019) have attributed the increasing rate of criminality that exacerbate insecurity in this country to structural tension and imbalance. According to Alao, the class divide and inequalities have never been this pronounced, bad and dangerous in the history of Nigeria. It is on the divisions like these that insecurity is born; and on the divisions like this it thrives. As he further noted, “once the foundational value of any society has become prostituted with injustice, oppression, marginalisation, deprivation, bad governance resulting into massive unemployment, structural insecurity becomes inevitable”. According to Galtung, all these are fast triggers of violence, agitations, conflict and, resultantly, insecurity.
This is the terrifying situation in which we are going into the 2023 elections. As the 2023 elections draws closely in, there are palpable tensions, fear and anxiety, as it has always been that transitional election, in particular, has always been a flashpoint of violence and tension. In the run-up to the 2015 elections, it was predicted that Nigeria would break up as a result of the likely violence that would ensue from the elections. Thank God, He averted the doomsday for us. As the electioneering process for the 2023 elections is just starting, statesmen like Chief Olusegun Obasanjo have again warned that the elections might make or break the country if we allow the politicians to mess us up. The implication of this warning or presumption is that if we don’t handle the election process very carefully, we might be plunged into a deeper pit of insecurity and violence. We need to acknowledge the hard fact that political and electoral violence is much more complex than armed conflict, and it is, indeed, a bigger threat to our national and individual security. We cannot afford to experience again the kind of massive killing and destruction of property that occurred in the post-election crisis in 2011. If we allow that, the country might break just like Chief Olusegun Obasanjo presumed.
Election is a contest of idea, and should not degenerate to mudslinging and incitement of one group against another through hate speech and indecent language. But with the look of things, the 2023 election is tilting towards the unwholesome approach. All stakeholders need to know that we cannot afford to turn Nigeria into another center of conflict in Africa.
2023 Elections: Effective Media Coverage amidst Insecurity
Although all stakeholders, including the politicians, must be committed to maintaining peace by averting escalation of our already terrifying security situation, (perhaps that is why they have signed the peace accord), media and journalists are the most important players in this aspiration. This is because journalists are indispensable actors in the political process of liberal democracy. They are inevitable in the sustenance of any modern society. They are the integral part of societal system without which a society cannot be kept in balance. Journalists are very vital for the success of any electoral process that is expected to bring about sustainable development in the atmosphere of peace and prosperity. Since the symbolic component of democratic politics is enmeshed in the mass media, journalists are key players in the process of producing, circulating and sustaining political symbolism in a way that will not only make the public well informed to take well informed decision, but also in a way that will sustain the continuous existence and prosperity of society. They must contribute to the process of public opinion formation by providing a forum in which citizens can share their views and allow ‘a collective view to evolve’ (Louw, 2005) without creating chaos of consensus. You journalists are capable of providing what Lerner (1984) called “mobilizing information” that shapes the citizens’ political tastes and preferences. But the mobilizing information you provide must not mobilize the public for war, rather it must refine their tastes and preferences within tolerance of diversity.
There has been a hot debate on the approach with which media and journalists have been reporting security challenges in Nigeria. My concern today is not to discuss the debate here. That should be a separate topic of discourse on another day. My focus rather here today is to engage us on how we should play the most important role expected of us to avert a breach of peace that can escalate our already bad security experiences through which we can ensure our safety as news workers before, during and after the election.
The primary rule in this regard is that amidst the tension of insecurity we have been contending with in Nigeria, journalists, at all time, and particularly in their coverage of the forthcoming election, must uphold the professional and ethical principles of journalism. This is decisive. The fulcrum of the ethical principles is built around truthfulness and objectivity.
Journalism, according to John Lloyd, has “meaning for those who practice it if it allows the free pursuit and publication of facts seen as important”. In helping people to make informed decisions about who to vote for, for instance, through informed information, journalists must provide evidential facts, and separate what is true from what we take to be true. As I will explain shortly, in this era when people prefer to hear what they take to be true, journalists must not fall into the temptation of stoking people’s idea of truthfulness that is far from verifiable truth. In this era, and for the purpose of the forthcoming elections, we journalists must be courageous and conscientious to attend carefully to our professional strictures of accuracy, impartiality and independence. This is why verification and fact-checking are important skills of our practice that we must master.
Objectivity is an imperative in media practice and morality. McQuail (2005, p. 200) highlights three basic features of objective journalism. One is that it adopts “a position of detachment and neutrality towards the object of reporting.” Secondly, there is a lack of partisanship, which he explains as “not taking sides in matters of dispute or showing bias.” Thirdly, objectivity “requires strict attachment to accuracy and truth.
On the other hand, the regime of objectivity, according to Haccket and Zhao (1988), comprises four dimensions.
Objectivity is a normative ideal, a set of desiderata (factualness, accuracy, completeness, as well as a stance of detachment, neutrality or independence).
It entails an epistemology, assumptions about knowledge and reality, like the possibility of separating values from facts and observers from the observed.
It involves newsgathering and presentation practices, like the use of appropriate sources and the separation of news from opinion in the pages of the daily paper.
Not showing bias
Yes, objectivity is not free-floating. Ability and the extent to which journalists can adhere to it depend on the social and institutional environment in which they operate. This is why McQuail (2005, p. 203) notes that the ideals of objectivity are “not unanimously regarded as possible to achieve, but in so far as we aim to understand the world, we cannot get along without assuming both the possibility and value of objectivity”.
What all these means is that we should not practice journalism of attachment in our coverage of the 2023 elections. Journalism of attachment increases lack of balance, selectivity, over simplification, dichotomization, polarization, which can all lead to a breach of peace. We should rather practice reliable journalism, which means reporting that seeks international standards of media reliability and credibility such as accuracy, impartiality or fair balance, and social responsibility. It also means that, as we report and comment on events relating to the 2023 elections, we should build in our consciousness a moderation habit founded on our principles and values and journalistic ethics so that we will not intentionally or unwittingly be using the inalienable right of freedom of expression we have as pretexts to incite people for discrimination and violence.
We have the sacred duty to accurately inform people so as to disprove rumours. There is always the temptation to fall for rumours because they are usually sensational and dramatic, but their effects, amplified by social networks, as I will expatiate shortly, can be catastrophic. They can fuel fear and panic, stigmatise communities, slander individuals and give a false idea of reality. Let’s not spice up our reports on the 2023 elections with belligerent tone imbued in unverified rumours. We are not even supposed to dwell on rumours, but on evidential facts.
Of course, journalists are also human, and so they have their pre-existing opinion and biases, which shape their own perception of the world. Yes, as human beings, we all have prejudices, beliefs that are deeply rooted in us, and stereotypes that our nurture had built in us. It is always tempting to relay on hoaxes and speculation when they seem to confirm those prejudices, beliefs and stereotypes. But we must conquer the temptation, and we can do this if we allow the ethos of our profession to sink in us to become an unconscious habit. We are not expected to be overly advocatory, rather we must extend our objectivity credo, avoid a non- partisan approach and adhere to avoidance of demonizing language. We should build up people’s confidence to have trust in our capability to prevent our biases from infiltrating into what we report to them about electoral process and about candidates.
Politicians will aggressively embark on strategic communication and spin doctoring to win the hearts and votes of the electorates. They will put up a lot of what Boorstin (1980) called pseudo-events. They will circulate misleading or false information with the purpose of influencing political views. Politicians will, without any remorse, circulate false that are meant to challenge the reputation of those they want to attack. That is their own logic. Politics is a strategic game. Yes, we cannot do without being the conveyor of their strategic communication. In politics, politicians need journalists just as the audience also need them. Therefore, in democracy, we mediate and mediatize. In our mediation and meditiazation, however, we must be independent and stick to our logic of accuracy and objectivity. In meditiazation process, media scholars said that there is always a struggle between media logic and political logic for preeminent influence on how politics is done and covered or reported by the media. What should guide journalists in this struggle is that they should be able to make their own judgments regarding what is thought to be the appropriate messages from the perspective of their own medium, its format, norms and values. We should be wary of strategic misinformation we will be inundated with every day by our politicians. We should not be the eco-chamber of their mischiefs. We must be careful to reduce our coverage of election to routinist reportage of well-rehearsed adversarial positions of political spokepersons to the detriment of authentic and fresh ideas.
I think we all fell for this kind of spin and strategic messages when we all unwittingly or mistakenly reported the statement from the Publicity Secretary of the People Democratic Party, Mr. Moronfoye, that accused the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mallam Garba Madami, of getting a bribe to the tune of N300 million from Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRasaq for the promise to sell victory to the All Progressive Party in the state. This was provocative, and reporting it had the potential of inciting violence in spite of the fact that a majority of us also published Mr. Moronfoye’s retraction and apology that his statement was misleading and unsubstantiated.
Because politicians know that we prefer, and are more attracted to conflict and personalization as important storytelling techniques when covering politics, they then construct events that focus on these aspects. This is what Governor Wike is enjoying in the media environment today. He has become a hero and celebrity because we are attracted more to him and his drama than other politicians. He knows our game, and he is successful to court us, even when he is using us to charge the polity. In this sense, journalists must be careful in making the mediated reality they create more important than the actual reality they should report. This is because it is the mediated reality, or what some scholars (Nimmo and Comb, 1983) called fantasy world, that people have access to and react to. The series of drama being enacted by Wike and his collaborators give some of us in the academic the fear that politician and their political logics have taken over or overridden the media and its logics.
Even if my own plea is that we should not allow politicians and their political logics to dominate our own media logic, some scholars are even thinking beyond this. The greater fear is how journalists and media have allowed the social media to dictate their practice. Journalists and media have lost control on political process, and neither the media logic or political logic controls political process. The control is now in the hands of uncontrolled citizens who are practicing unorganized journalism that now unfortunately serves as sources for the trained journalists and legacy media. From my little research, the news bulletins of many private radio stations in Ilorin here are dominated by the unverified information, misinformation and disinformation from the social media.
I need to beg us that in our coverage of the 2023 election, we must not be the echo chamber of the disinformation on social media. In other words, there are a lot of deceptions that are already being masqueraded as news on social media. They should not be picked or validated by the legacy media through you.
Social media are now the platforms for weaponisation of information as evident in the spread of disinformation and misinformation (Ireton and Posetti, 2018, p. 15). It is essential that we should not serve as the amplifier for fake news and hate speech that dominate and characterized the social media. Fake news and hate speech are capable of promoting diversity rather than the needed bond and cohesion that is necessary for the country stability. They sustain the culture of intolerance. They are meant to incite people to violence or prejudicial action. They are a poison that divides society, blinds the mind, reinforces sentiments and can plunge society into unending conflicts.
Journalists must therefore act as a beacon of the media sphere. The proliferation of socalled ‘citizen journalism’ (with social networks, mobile phones and blogs) and the dawn of a continuous stream of information have made it an absolute necessity to check, filter and interpret these information flows, which circulate amidst a chaotic jumble of rumour, extrapolation, speculation and trolling.
Today, in our post-truth era, people’s disdain for truth propels them to look for ‘alternative facts’ that they can peddle to promote their mischiefs, even when they know that the alternative facts have no iota of truth in them. Many people in Nigeria today just want to believe that Tinubu is seriously ill, and he is not fit to be our President, even when there is a viral video of him riding a bicycle. In this era, information competes with misinformation. In this era, good information and bad information that are equally believable co-exist. It is our duty to search for the fact with which we can rescue people from the deluge of confusion they are plunged into by the avalanche of contradictory information they are bombed with so that they can tell the difference. We should help our audience to understand reality as it truly is, and not as the politicians prefer it to be. For the 2023 election, journalists, who have ethical contract with the truth and facts, should not be corrupted by the virus of the post-truth era.
Social media is an arena for voyeurism, dominated by the habit of impugning reputation through an expose that is malevolent. Journalists must not fall for this if we are not committed to fomenting calamitous violence that will worsen our frightening security situation. We should be wary of negative advertising that politicians will want us to convey because if we propagate it for them, we will be indirectly provoking animosity and chaos.
Let me emphasize it here that the way and manner we influence people’ opinions and reactions to issues pertaining to the election through our news frames is critical. We should know that through the way we frame our reports, we indirectly promote a particular definition of an issue through selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration. Through our news frames, we unconsciously promote one particular interpretation of events, and prime the events. So, we should avoid frames that can be prone to inciting violence.
Generally, reporting politics and election is, to me, like reporting conflict- because election is a competition. Thus, we must emphasize peace and embark on something like peace journalism by giving voice to all parties, empathy and understanding. We should not pitch or pit one against the other. We must create an impression of win-win situation, rather than zero-sum orientation. We must shun the subjectivity of the relaters and focus on the objectivity of reality. There is the temptation for us as journalists to opt for a more dramatic, more emotional, more provocative and more sensational mode of telling, especially in this era of multichannel and commercial time-span mindsets. But we must conquer the temptation.
We must not accentuate or heighten unnecessary and unreasonable polemics that can make antagonists or sides in election to so solidified against each other to the point Giddens called “the degenerate spirals of communication” (1994). Like journalists have been doing in the case of Wike problem within his party.
We must not be tempted to give too much access to the voice of the extremists among the candidates. Or give undue access to their vociferous prominence and stridency- like Wike. Of course, such characteristics are perceived to be more alluring to readers and viewers. If we do this, we will end up allowing our channels be inundated with propaganda messages instead of a genuine discourse and exchange of views. Abandoning the media front to such extremists might bear serious security consequences.
We must be moderate in our reporting. Through the extravagance of our coverage, we must not set off an atmosphere of fury and vehemence.
During electioneering process, parties are occupied with communicating to the environment in order to fortify their relative position by attracting electorates to join forces with them to outweigh the opponent. Journalists and reporters carry the message the rivaling sides transmit. If the tone they set is vehement and ardent, accentuating the zeal of combat, the electorates might be enthused and drawn into the cycle of violence, thus expanding it. If, on the other hand, the tone is reticent and composed, underlying that election is not do or die, the electorate will refrain from being desperate. This is what Schattschneider called contagion effect model.
I must confess at this juncture that all the normative guidelines that I have set out here today are not easy task by any standard. I will not want to bore you down with a long elucidation of the theoretical explanations of why they are not easily achievable. But I need to quickly point out the few reasons you can easily relate to. The summary of the reasons as given by Hallin (1986) and Avrahim (2003) is that the political culture in which media operate holds enormous sway over coverage patterns. Besides, journalists operate within a pressurizing commercial model that places profit motive over any ethical compliance. Thus, as Herman and Chomsky (1988) as well as Shoemaker and Reese (2008) succinctly put it, there is a limit to the agency of journalists because they are influenced in their practice by both internal and external pressures. Prominent among the pressures are ownership interests, advertisers’ pressure and daily work routines. I must also let you know that the external influences might not be effective if the ground rule of journalism is not changed or re-structured. Therefore, if we can commit ourselves to real information rather entertainment like what we rush to Wike for, reasoned arguments rather than confrontations, substances of issue-based campaign rather than unwholesome political tactics and analysis of process rather than individuals and scandals, we will overcome the pressures and carry out the normative roles to enhance security.
Safety of journalists
Now, I will want to engage you on the second leg of this lecture – safety of journalists as a priority. In engaging you on this, I must establish that journalists have always been faced with dangers while covering electoral processes in Nigeria since the inception of democracy in the country, which have always directly or indirectly undermined their safety. Of course, there are political challenges that have been subjecting journalists covering elections in Nigeria to the debilitating dangers that undermine their safety. Some of these challenges include: political thuggery, journalists being partisan, ownership influence and induced collaboration and radicalism of journalists. Permit me to quickly run down these challenges with the purpose of understanding how we can guarantee or prioritize our safety during the 2023 elections.
Political Thuggery
Thuggery, gangsterism, vendetta, blackmailing, cultism or diabolical engagements are the instruments of politics in Nigeria. Perhaps, this is why we say politics is dirty in Nigeria. Political thuggery, for example, is characterized by intimidation, gangersterism, murder, physical assault and often involves physical combat between two opposing gangs or groups which ultimately generates inter-personal or group hostilities. All these dimensions bring about violence that threatens the safety of journalists.
Politics therefore, is more of a war, and it is a do-or-die affair being orchestrated/coordinated by political fatherism. Many god fathers maintain army of thugs who intimidate political opponents. The reign of Adedibu and his orchestration of violence and criminalization of politics in Oyo state politics can never be forgotten.
So where politics is criminalized, journalists cannot be safe because they might step on toes in the performance of their statutory roles of investigating, informing and educating the public on national issues.
Partisanship
Journalists as political animals themselves cannot perform their duties in political process without complete bias. In their selection of news and framing of political candidates and parties, journalists have been accused of partisanship. Partisanship is a dimension of subjective reporting.
Not being objective endangers journalists’ lives. We don’t know up till today why Ubabgwu of the Nation, Paul Abayomi Ogundeji, a member of the Editorial Board of This Day, Bayo Ohu, a Political Editor in This Day, were killed some years ago. Also, the killing of Dimgba Igwe, a veteran Nigerian journalist and media administrator, by a hit-and-run driver near his residence in the Okota area of Lagos, still remains mysterious till today. Nevertheless, the assumptions and comments from people is that their killing might not be unconnected with what some commentators called “crappy journalism. As a commentator put it, “Maybe someone actually killed them because of their crappy journalism. So, if you write crappy news, your life is in danger.
Ownership Influence and Induced Collaboration
This challenge is closely related to the issue of partisanship among journalists. The majority of the news media today are owned by politicians, and they are established to pursue their political interests and ambition. With this trend, journalists have been facing a daunting challenge that a veteran journalists had described as double jeopardy. The trend has made journalists inescapable from induced collaboration with government that has alliance with the owners of most media organizations. In this wise, many journalists working in the media organizations enjoy, with ethical dilemma, mouthwatering largesse that is difficult to turn down. They are given as gifts land in choice areas and regular monetary inducements in order to edit out news that are unfavourable to the interest of the owners or select stories that are meant to damage the integrity of the opponents. They, therefore, become partisan and thereby lose the major principle of their profession. These brands of journalists are what Lars Holman described as an “instrumental” journalism that are guilty of sycophancy, of “unquestioning deferential support for rulers, or a particular candidate at the expense of others, flamboyant praise for mediocrity, popularizing excess and impropriety,” and of “a craven desire to bat on any winning side. This kind of journalism exposes many journalists to dangers because when the opponents, who might not have right of reply or access to media, become the subject of attack, the safety of the majority of journalists is threatened. Many unconfirmed killing of many journalists might be attributed to this trend or challenge. Some observers have explained the killing of Dimgba Igwe from the perspective of this challenge. The unresolved killing of Bayo Ohu of the Guardian newspaper, Edo Sule and Abayomi Ogundeji of the Comet and the Nation, respectively, can also be attributed to this trend.
Radicalism
Journalism in Nigeria began with the ideology of radicalism to strengthen the nationalist struggle against colonial masters. The ideology was sustained to fight military imperialism that shaped the longest part of the history of this nation. The carry-over of the ideology has defined the relationship between journalists and politicians in Nigeria. The manifestation of this ideology of radicalism is overzealousness on the part of journalists with a mis-understanding of their responsibility and confusion of politician issues with political issue.
The resultant effect of misunderstanding the notion of watchdog relationship of journalists with politicians as one that is driven by adversary is that journalism can descend to muckracking or yellow journalism, adversarial watchdogism and junkyard journalism – all which threaten the safety of journalists.
Summary of the Revised Edition of the Code of Election Coverage as adopted by NUJ, NGE, NPAN, BON, RATTAWU and GOCOP, and supported by NAWOJ, IPC, MRA, IMS, PTCIJ, WSCIJ.
Conclusion
Journalists must cover or report the 2023 election in a way that guarantees the security of this nation as well as their safety. They can do this if they are able to commit to, and strengthen the ethos of professionalism in the practice of journalism. In other words, individual journalist that wishes to guarantee the security of the nation and safety of his or her life must imbibe and demonstrate the professional norms of good journalism, which have been identified as including particularly truthfulness, objectivity, neutrality and detachment ((Kempf, 2007). Such ethos of professionalism enjoins journalists to avoid the practices of fraternization with political aspirations of their owners. It encourages them to eschew all forms of subjective or biased reporting of political events and issues. Of course, journalists thrive and rejoice on drama and spectacle. That is no doubt a major news value that often forms the basis of their judgment. However, when extravagant perspective and drama triumph over the core essentials of journalism, objectivity is downplayed, and definitely this threatens the security of the nation and the safety of journalists. As Olatunji Dare once put it, “journalism serves the public interest best when it is grounded on facts”. Therefore, “journalists should engage in a relentless search for facts, and cultivate the nice sense of discrimination essential for distinguishing fact from rumour” or gossip or campaign of calumny, the kind that is likely to be orchestrated by political parties as the campaign rallies are set in motion.. To the best of my knowledge, partisanship and all forms of professional ethical vices do violence to the best spirit of journalism as much as it does violence to the nation and journalists themselves.
But apart from the need for the inculcation of the ethos of professionalism by journalists in Nigeria as a whole, there is also the need for a sort of institutional safety mechanisms. The House of Representative had once shown light in this direction with their intention to criminalize non-payment of salaries, which is a big challenge journalists are facing. This intention needs to be intensified and broaden to institutionalize a compulsory insurance and reliable pension scheme for journalists. This might enable them to shun all forms of distasteful practice that can endanger the nation as well as their lives.
References
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*Professor Adesina Lukuman Azeez is Dean, Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences,University of Ilorin
