It is an honour to be invited by members of the fourth estate to share my views and perspective on the Role of Media in Maintaining Security and other matters connected there with. I would like to thank the NUJ Executive for this invitation and for selecting a topic that is both timely and relevant.
Having said this, please permit me to begin by setting the scene as follows:
It is a fact that work of security agencies, most importantly the police, is a public function, involving regular interface with the public. Therefore, the policeman and the Police Institution are the most publicly observed entities of the law enforcement agencies anywhere in the world. They are subject of serious public scrutiny and often receive harsh assessment from the public. The media is an important platform of conveying the feelings of the society about the performance of the security agencies. Due to their professionalism, the media actors also play a vital role in ensuring fair assessment of the security agencies, the security situation in the society, and the maintenance of law and order through their reportage.
With limited means, Police officers on daily basis attend to crime and emergency situations, including assessing, identifying and arresting deviants. In addition, the police officers enforce the laws that keep the communities and public lives and property safe. This explains why the citizens are becoming interested in observing security matters and consequently lead to the emergence of community surveillance.
Furthermore, with the widespread of modern information and telecommunication technology, such as smartphones and digital devices and cameras, citizens have gained some power to instantly record scenarios and other real-time incidences and report them on different media platforms, often without the requisite professional media practice skills. This has immediately brought to fore the cases of unverified and false information, which is known as “fake news”. In the name of community surveillance, some citizens release controversial recorded videos or audios of incidences, especially security related incidences. Some conventional field reporters have unwittingly fallen prey to such ill-conceived reportage and have gotten into trouble with their media houses.
Ladies and gentlemen participants, it is important to reflect on this note, some of the recents among several misleading information carried by some conventional media outlets. Amongst these is the recent unfortunate incident regarding the murder of a female student of Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto which for security consideration I will not like to repeat the narrative. But I hope there are great lessons learned by both the Conventional Media Practitioners and the distractions by the kind of reportage from Social Media Outlets that unnecessarily escalated tensions.
The Police and Media Relationships in Maintaining Overtime Security Matters
Ladies and gentlemen participants, let me begin with a phrase: ‘He who control the media controls the mind’
Media influences public perception therefore, it is important to reflect on the history of police and media relationship in maintaining security. This exploration will lead to an in depth understanding of roles play by the media in maintaining security and how emergence of current changes to the media affect the security management.
However, law enforcement officers attempt to become more accountable and transparent because they are aware of the public’s vigilant watch over them and the “new visibility” caused by online social media.
There has always been a unique relationship between the police and media in particular since before the advent of internet media and other advancement in technology. Traditional media organizations and police agencies have always had a symbiotic relationship where they rely on each other for particular information necessary to function effectively. Brian Kingshott elaborates that “in all democratic societies, the media has a role to play”. Both the media and the police have responsibility to work as partners. Traditional media organizations, such as television news, newspapers, and radio, strive towards giving the public accurate information in a reasonable time, while the public are eager to receive breaking news and well-rounded coverage on news worthy events.
Cooke and Sturges explain that, “media depend on police for the constant release of crime and crash information as the lifeblood of their news stories.” This has been the practice overtime. These media organizations tend to focus on events involving the police due to increased viewer interest in security related matters. Traditionally, media organizations have maintained an operational connection with the police so that they could function at an optimal level, so they can continue to receive information and insight into particular events. Likewise, police organizations have typically relied on media organizations to share specific information with the public when needed. The police use the media outlets, like news organizations and reporters to assist in crime prevention, detection and the promotion of positive image of the force.
In other words, police use media to communicate with the public through organized media outlets, telling the public when they need to protect themselves or how citizens can assist the police in investigations. As professional courtesy, the police may share information but expect professional media outlets to convey their agency in a positive way, to encourage trust and respect from the public. Police achieve this portrayal by initiating communication with media sources when a newsworthy criminal event occurs.
However, media intrusion sometimes can cause police organizations to adopt self-protection strategies. For example, police may develop a “tell them only what you must” attitude, becoming secretive and protective of information for public safety. In order to maintain control, police have taken a proactive stance. Police prepare for media conferences and pre-packaging information prior to its release. Policing agencies benefit from organized press because they have an opportunity to prepare themselves. Overall, police agencies have developed an increased level of sophistication towards media management”
Citizens journalism.
Current trends and impacts in Security Management:
My Dear Congress Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Nigeria Police Force has realized that media management is a priority component of public perception and police image. In the past police officers did not predict nor adequately prepare for media management based on the traditional model. This is particularly so with the advent of ‘technology based media practices, community surveillance and citizen’s journalism.
Therefore, both the Nigeria police and journalism practitioners in the country no doubt did not ‘Predict’ or plan for ways of proper management of emerging trend of unconventional journalism especially the current creative digital media such as media sharing websites and social networking. Consequently, these new media practices allow for quickest spread of available news items and visibility materials across various digital network platforms. The gaps created by this situation clearly explained why NPF police find it difficult to achieve their goals of getting it right on “media management” in totality. This is because the social media lacks rules, ethics, organization, professionalism, and control. As these new media practices allow citizens to participate in sharing information at their own discretion. Of course, it’s a good and wonderful development and very vital in the 21st century where the public fully participate in the media world.
On the foregoing, it’s sufficient to say that this Community Surveillance System is what are often referred as social media practices or citizen journalism. This is also described as “guerrilla journalism” because it involves citizens gathering evidence and sharing their own interpretations of current events with the public. One of the main aspects of citizen journalism is that the individuals who share media items are not associated with any traditional media outlets. Some examples include, “eyewitness footage from cell phones, reporting of stories originally broken by citizen journalism initiatives on the web, or even guest reporter slots in which citizens participate. Social Media sharing is therefore a unique form of citizens journalism. At the moment, the trend is attractive to individuals who are “highly involved in their communities”. On the overall, citizens journalism is an alternative to traditional media that allows ordinary citizens to witness and document their experiences and share them with the members of the public.
My Dear Congress Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen, Citizens journalism is at the moment being encouraged for its benefits of providing quick public information. Citizens journalists have increasingly being offering opportunities to all citizens becoming recognized by their peers and rewarded for their work especially whenever their information is enlightening. In fact, “social media has capability for cultivating a culture of reward from a virtual audience, amplifying a desire for fame and public recognition”. Consequently, Police have no control over the actions or views by channels of all citizen-reporters. This therefore brought about unprofessional negative views on incidences with security dimensions. In other words, citizen’s journalism allows citizens to “set an agenda for themselves and keep subverting the traditional model of the press as the primary arbiters of the public agenda”. Overall citizen journalism gives ordinary citizens the opportunity to spread messages and their personal opinions.
The need for journalists to have a balance in their stories
Public Misconceptions: “sometimes not getting the whole picture”
My Dear Congress Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen, please note that Citizens journalism and social media sometimes provide inaccurate or incomplete information to the public. In other words, the public negative perception of certain incidents may be based on video evidence that is inadequate which create chaos into the minds of law abiding citizens. it is a common belief that community surveillance in the form of videos or even the views of bystanders may only be a snapshot of an entire event. In other words, the evidence given to the public through the form of social media videos or witness accounts may not explain the entire situation that took place, or give accurate accounts of the scenario.
Videos or comments sometimes are one piece of it and that’s always the argument. You never get that 360 panoramic view. You don’t get to see what happened before or what happened after. Sometimes a clip just captures a few moments of an entire event. It’s one angle, one perspective so other things need to be explored. For instance, some videos that show police in a bad light often do not captured the whole incident, although, admittedly some are the architect of their own predicament. Videos can give the public a general idea of what took place. There may be information missing from video evidence or the angle of the video might be misinterpreted. Police officers in these films are working directly in the field; they may encounter unique physical or emotional experiences only to their knowledge. Videos do not provide the public with the personal experiences of a police officer. In other words, videos do not capture the insider perspective of police officers in each particular situation. Furthermore, there are many dimensions at work and decisions of police officers and videos only give viewers an outsider’s perspective.
Steps taken by Nigeria Police Force to checkmate citizen’s journalism in maintaining security
It is in view of the evolution in the media world that the Nigeria Police Force has since adopted community policing strategies and incorporated in totality the concept of citizen’s journalism in its system in order to give proper image of events, checkmate malicious reportage and improve the perceptions and public trust of the Police. It is on this direction that the IGP launched community policing in all the 36 states and 774 LG’s of the federation encompassing them to partner with the police in information sharing.
However, the Nigeria police force equally launched a mobile phone application called “police Rescue Me App” to be on the same page with citizens’ journalism and to monitor new trends of crimes. This application collates so many features with real-timeline locations which is being monitored 24 hours at the Command and Control Centre across the 36 states of the federation and FCT. The features includes: Emergency calls, lives streaming of incidence, picture reporting and lot more. Equally in place is a free toll line available 24hours across Nigeria for the same purpose.
However, the Public Relation Department at the force Hqtrs has directed and put in place requisite mechanism for ensuring that all the state PRO’s engage actively on social media and receive direct complain from the public for necessary action. This is just to show you how the Nigeria police conform with members of the public in the social media networking and of course in general accepting citizens’ journalism. The public now has a dedicated space to share relevant stories with the police directly. They can also participate in police monitoring and accountability. Necessary steps are also taken through deployment of available intelligence assets of the force to analyze and take necessary measures against violators of citizens rights and robust information management system.
Recently, the Inspector-General of Police IGP Usman Alkali Baba psc(+) NPM,fdc on 14th September ,2022 launched Cybercrime reporting portal at police Force Hqtrs and charged members of the public who are strategic partners in security and policing of the country to report all forms of Cybercrimes including identity theft, child sexual exploitation, cyber-stalking, cyber bullying, credit card fraud, internet fraud and other forms of cybercrimes online through the Nigeria Police Force Cybercrime reporting portal- http://incb.npf.gov.ng, or interpolnigeria@npf.gov.ng via whatsapp on 07043797900 and via call/SMS on 08094557845.
My Dear Congress Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen, having noted the vital roles played by the media in security management and the accompanying challenges, the police and the conventional media practitioners have a role to play in line with the current trend and challenges and to think of how to professionally dominate the media space. On the part of the Journalists, it’s a responsibility to ensure the flow of filtered information for public consumption, as lack of flow of authentic information is responsible for the havoc we are seeing in our society.
The media and the police need each other for a transparent flow of information by the members of the public. We are both accountable to each other. In as much as investigative journalism is encouraged for problem solving, most media reporters in their struggle to be the first that break the news forget that in most instances security matters require in-depth investigation to unravel the circumstances that led to the situation. To correct the menace created by unconventional Social Media reporting system, which keeps distracting the conventional field reporters and their media houses, collaborative capacity building workshops should be organized from time to time and to be anchored by this congress.
Finally, let me at this point reemphasize that, security matters don’t always lie within security agencies only. And in reality we are accountable to the society and we can’t do it alone. It is an open fact that we need media collaboration for a robust information management so we can achieve an optimum level for maintaining security especially in the challenging 21st century.
On this note, let me once again extend my profound gratitude to NUJ Executive for finding me worthy of this invitation and at the same time looking forward for a robust synergy with all media stakeholders in the state.
Gumel, the Sokoto state Commissioner of Police delivered this paper during NUJ congress which held on Saturday, September 17, 2022.
