Conflict reporting can’t be sheer content creation

Expectedly, this season of uncertainty unleashed on the nation by #EndBadGovernance campaigners is revealing acutely strange tendencies about the media. Whatever may be the stance of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), global broadcasting now runs ceaselessly on the telephone handset of individuals, courtesy of the internet. Facebook is hardly any less laden as the utmostly manipulable X’s Space.

This is the same country where it took us, as relentless activists, to struggle for more than a decade to secure legitimacy for community broadcasting. And (in)security was often the excuse from the authorities. But now that broadcasting has transcended the influence arena of NBC, the nation is still hanging on to NBC in spite of repeated recommendations by experts who keep citing the example of America’s Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and the UK’s OfCom. These two bodies regulate broadcasting and telecommunication services in their respective countries. In spite of the famous Orosanye report recommending the merger of a number of government organs, the Tinubu administration, coming after two other governments that should have radicalised the regulation of broadcasting and telecommunications by bunching them up, still appears timid.

But if wisdom eludes a man while enduring some trial, can he ever get to muster wisdom? At the height of the 2023 presidential campaigns, caution was thrown to the wind by several bloggers in town, many of them doing the bidding of their sponsors who did not care whatever became of the fragile peace of the nation.

Almost every report became breaking news. Such was the prefix severely abused that not a few of elders in journalism practice and scholarship expressed public concern. However, perhaps because the reckless indulgence in the deployment of that prefix may not attract any legal sanction other than undermine their credibility, that bad habit has stuck. This presents a clear paucity of solution journalism as prescribed by conflict-sensitive journalism, the respect for which every society requires during such tension-soaked periods as the election period. And protest seasons such as those currently playing out.

Yet again, only very recently, the executive director of Media Career Services, Lekan Otufodurin, felt so bothered about another variant of less than ethical conduct of folks who run news blogs. He tried to remind them that indulgence in plagiarism was most condemnable as it could be considered criminal to present someone else’s work as yours.

This disregard for caution in relation to plagiarism has however entered another worse level following the commencement of the #EndBadGovernance marches around the country. The operators of several so-called news blogs, in a manner suggestive of being appendages of bad governance, readily feign ubiquity. Rather than modestly characterise themselves as being particularly reliable for reports from a particular locality, they harvest copiously with reckless abandon from other sources and proclaim already published reports as theirs, even when it may be obvious that the report being used hours later no longer reflects the truth about wherever they are trying to report. So, even when peace may have been restored to an otherwise tumultuous scene, the plagiarists are still giving their unsuspecting readers the wrong impression

Lekan’s position is derived from his observation of bloggers’ seeming blindness to ethical uprightness especially in relation to plagiarism. It readily derives from armchair journalism characteristic of one-person blogs giving the impression of owning multiple bureaux spread around the country. What has happened to the pride of giving credit to the rightful sources even as the window of access may not get diminished in any way?

Scholars and professionals in journalism have always reckoned with other media as veritable news sources. It only requires that the user of a previously published report should endeavour to verify the truthfulness or otherwise of the report in question. A smart reporter will also, as a matter of necessity, endeavour to add more value either by updating or enriching with thorough analysis by experts or some other informed minds.

No respectable medium will routinely indulge in copying and pasting and expect to have a quality audience. What is left of professionalism? It’s the road to the cascading and seamless realm of content creation where anything goes.

Content creation being a new, technology-induced, concept in the media ecosystem may never cease to amaze media professionals and scholars. So fluid and hard to define, content creation can be as amusing as may be stupefying. Being audio-visual and ubiquitous and being phone compliant and requiring no sophistication to access, they are incredibly popular yet require no training to initiate. It’s the worst form of mimicry for genuine journalism practice.

Content creation has featured ludicrous conversations that their producers would prefer to identify as interviews. Some of them have paraded humanity diminishing spectacles revealing subjects ranging from the weirdest narrations and display of sex-related demonstrations in the most revealing forms even as they brandish varying sums of cash as baits for unsuspecting respondents who surrender to sometimes incomprehensibly laughable manipulations resulting from the hardship inflicted on citizens by the harsh economic conditions

Unfortunately, some of the self-acclaimed news bloggers have, unknown to them perhaps, slipped into what presents them as charlatans best reckoned with as casual content creators in the way they run their routines. Some roads attempted to be blocked in Abuja in the morning period but were cleared by security operatives almost immediately got unashamedly flaunted in the evening by the spineless bloggers as “Breaking News”. To achieve what? What’s the capacity of the fellow hungry folks of Nigeria to endure the ceaseless flow of unnerving news? Do these bloggers have professional considerations in running their sites? Do they reckon that their recklessness may also rub off on their counterparts who are decidedly thorough?

Rather than wait for complainants, is it completely impossible for the National Media Complaints Commission populated by our professional elders like Lanre Idowu and Eugenia Abu and others to be proactive in arresting this dangerous slide?

The general public is the victim of the unpleasant degeneracy of professionalism in the media. If it is convenient to be ignored by some other citizens, it should not be the same for us as critical stakeholders. Indeed, it is our proactiveness to matters such as we raise here that will lend credence to our sincerity of purpose on some other pending issues.

The same way digital technology has fueled the craze for unfounded competition on “Breaking News” is the same way digital technology has given rise to the Cybercrime Prohibitions Act of 2015 with its conspicuous imperfections betraying a rather reductionist disposition to the entire media sector. How much more dis-empowering to us can the Cybercrime Advisory Council be? Ensuring that our charity begins from home, however, may be quite inspiring. We must be seen to be paying the needed attention to our inadequacies.

Tunde Akanni, PhD, a media and conflict expert, is an associate professor at the Lagos State University. Follow him on X @AkintundeAkanni.