(Concluding Remark on World Press Freedom Day when the Editors and SERAP celebrated it on March 3, 2025)
AS I was saying, the market-driven journalism genre that has long been with us is now a he challenge. That is why modern researchers on media management such as Dennis Herrick, the author of the groundbreaking “Media management in the age of the GIANTS” are now focusing on the business dynamics of journalism, which is threatening press freedom in our country that unfortunately cannot boast of a robust private sector.
Undoubtedly, in this age when citizen journalism practice, which tends to empower everyone as a journalist through investigative journalism, can public office holders and stockholders be monitored and held to account? At the moment, breaking news items, most of which are press statements and official pronouncements can be newsworthy. They are most times public relations. Why do I say that? The classic definition of news is: News is something, somebody somewhere is trying to hide, the rest is advertising. This is what viewers, readers and listeners want from the news media. Public officials even in global context, would always want to hide something from the public. And so a journalist’s capacity to dig out something the public officials want to hide is the way to hold them to be accountable.
That is why experts tend to agree that investigative journalism is capable of pricking at public capacity for outrage. Some even call it ‘journalism of outrage’. That form of journalism is now being nurtured by data (data journalism). It has measurable elements and has persisted and endured everywhere as a way of ‘seeking reform within a system’.
Ordinarily good journalism should be one of democracy’s safety valves. Without it, journalism can become sterile and barren. Without it, these days, a newspaper can become uncaring and bloodless. Without it, it becomes easier for government and our society to develop hardening of arteries and the heart.
Some deliverables:
Let’s us not get it twisted, there will never be a cosy relationship between state actors and good journalists. And so whenever you see that state actors and journalists are harping on a buzzword, ‘we are partners in progress’, there must have been a compromise against the people. Journalism isn’t public relations.Journalism exists to scrutinise and question deviations, doubts, monitor governance and hold state and non-state actors to account. Journalism exists too to probe questionable reputation and integrity. Public relations goal is to manage reputation and control damage done to reputation perhaps though good journalism. This is yet another opportunity to explain this conceptual confusion to most people who do not understand what journalism is all about.
We need to know that state actors all over the world want journalists to do public relations for them. Journalism seeks to cover what is odd, bizarre and unusual about peoples, places and events. That is also why some scholars have defined the most valuable product journalists sell, ‘the news’ as something, somebody somewhere is trying to hide, the rest is advertising’. And facts, which are the main ingredients of news are regarded as sacred.
So, journalists are to cover people, events and places. Journalism is people-centric. So, it is the remit of journalists to cover people, places and events but most people in authority, especially the power and business elites want us to cover up for them at all times. Most state actors and dubious businessmen want journalists to cover them up as if journalists were their reputation managers.
Anyone who does this for personal gains should not be regarded as good journalists. This should explain why before the kingdom of God will come to man again, journalists and state actors including those who are even doing well, will never be good friends. Such friendships never last. And here is why: No reader outside the state houses will subscribe to a newspaper that is full of praises of state actors who are mostly underachievers. Readers and listeners want to read or listen to items about unusual affairs of states such as robust investments in education, critical infrastructure that leads to visible and remarkable feats in WAEC/WASCE, JAMB/UTME results.
People want to read about or watch on television extraordinary investments in massive road construction and healthcare facilities that will prevent medical tourism to India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, etc. But our political actors will renovate only four school classrooms and they want the classrooms photo and the commissioning on the front pages and prime time news on radio and television. What is unusual there? What is the news in an ordinary classroom renovation?
The federal legislators with strange alacrity for approving foreign loans for even consumption will want journalists to hail their careless gestures. The federal legislators who would not like to approve electronic transmission of results of elections in Nigeria, the world’s most populous black nation would want journalists to put them on front pages for their perfidy against the people they represent. Our leaders who keep flying to even African countries for simple medical care, want journalists to write editorials on the front pages about why they can’t equip even the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital and the National Hospital Abuja to prevent our reproachful medical tourism to the United Kingdom and India! Our leaders who can’t provide security for even our school children want journalists to celebrate their mediocrity.
That isn’t what journalism is all about. Good journalism, which still matters is
about unusualness, extra-ordinariness, oddities, even in all aspects of human
affairs. Good journalism isn’t about prominence, oratory and sophistry on
banditry. It is about significance of service delivery and quality of sustainable
goals and deliverables. And here is the thing, no power on earth has defeated
or successfully suppressed good journalism.
That is the only way they can understand that Freedom of the Press provision
in most constitutions around the world isn’t about the privilege of journalists.
Freedom the media exercises derives from the Freedom Expression power of
the people. We can’t be enemies of the same people we interview to express
themselves. Freedom of Expression allows people to tell their stories, help
advocate, hold governments to international human rights standards.
From access to information to freedom of assembly: freedom of expression allows active participation in civil society and for that civil engagement to be heard. From petition to boycotts, from public protest to collective organisation for workers’ rights, freedom of expression facilitates action and allows events to be reported on. A robust media – of citizens or news organisations can act as a public watchdog, bringing important issues to light. Our leaders in Abuja need to study the construct of Thomas Jefferson’s assertion that, “By sharing knowledge and sparking debate, a free press invigorates and educates the nation’s citizens”. The same Jefferson adds, that “Freedom will be a short-lived possession unless the people are well informed”. They also need to understand what John Adams means when he said, “The liberty of the press is essential to the security of the state”.
To the sponsors of Toxic Media Bills
The sponsors of the toxic media bills should note what “The Seaford Star” told the US president in 2018 too: That today journalists in Nigeria are standing together in solidarity, as the messengers, the champions of the underdog, the cheerleaders of our youth, the spotlight on evil, the voices of the voiceless and the eyes and ears of our communities. We are not defending our freedom. We are defending the Freedom of the People to express their views in a democracy. We are not the enemy they need to fight.
Conclusion:
We should really be vigilant enough to recognise emerging rule of a strongman in this country. Whenever you see strong words coming against the media in form of mulling malicious regulation instead of taking erring media men to court, you should get prepared for the arrival of strongmen. Our strongmen who are preparing for 2027 elections ruthlessly at this moment are satisfied that they have captured the state with the wobbly democracy we have in place now without strong institutions to nurture it.
The elements of a functional democracy always include part or all of the following: participation of the people either directly or indirectly, independent judiciary, separation of powers, the rule of law, the respect for fundamental rights, free and fair elections, multi-party system, freedom of the press, accountability and transparency of governance process, among others.
Is it therefore surprising that everywhere you go in Nigeria today, speakers and keynoters are still saying openly that Nigeria still requires capable, reliable, and sustainable institutions: strong and credible legislature; capable police forces; independent judges; a free press; a vibrant private sector and a reliable civil society to give life to our democracy. This is where a strongman can thrive…
As ‘The Economist’ warned in a cover in 2018, “…the world should be worried about the rise of strongman politics”. Now, I need to sensitise our people to get prepared for war on truth. There may be some curious correlation between the strategic launch of war on (social) media, failed attempt to regulate the civil society and the expediency of emasculating the opposition to the point of death.
I hope no one will insinuate tomorrow that there may be some hidden political agenda in all these curious warming-up activities to launch emergence of strongman politics.
POSTSCRIPT:
I hope some state actors in Nigeria, our Nigeria watched and learned from the strategic role AL JAZEERA played in contextually reporting the United State’s President Donald Trump’s first state visits to the Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arad Emirates (UAE), which ended at the weekend.
Al Jazeera, run as an independent television channel launched in November 1996, began English transmission in 2006, is owned by only 3.1 million Qatari people and government but run through a Qatari Foundation. The significant channel for the Arab world remarkably reported whatever even the “CNN”, “BBC”, “Sky News”, etc didn’t want the world to see and know about what the oil-rich gulf states have done with their oil wealth. The three hosts to President Trump, (Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE) are now investing strategically even in the West as they look beyond oil and gas exports. The same Qatar owns Qatar Airways, which ordered $200 billion worth of Boeing vessels while Trump was there. When will Nigeria’s state actors free the “FCRN/NON” and “NTA” from their stranglehold and borrow from the brilliance and business dynamics of Aljazeera, which hardly shows the faces of those who run Qatar? When can we have a Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation for the black people of the world?
- Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sundays. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.