By Zailani Bappa
Responsibility entails having a duty to deal with. It is a cardinal duty of accomplishing a task that will comfort a conscience. It is what makes the human a worthy being dutiful and useful, a justification of his existence in what we have developed as a society. The journalist, with a vehicle known as the media, is tasked by the society to be dutiful in creating and promoting love and harmony and increasing the pace of development amongst men. Anything contrary to that is undutiful and hence, irresponsible.
Peace is the basis of development. It is the basis of meaningful existence. It must be pursued at all cost. Yes, at all cost. This also entails the surrender of what is right or tolerating some wrong if it has the potentiality of ensuring peace and harmony. The media is supposed to accommodates this. That is what is called social responsibility. It is a situation where the media must determine the desirability of saying the truth or otherwise to achieve peace. It is a situation where it abhors promoting and glorifying wrong deeds even if factual. The media must help those in responsibility to actualize the duty entrusted upon them.
However, what the majority of the Nigerian media and even the international media represented in Nigeria has imbibed over the years is the glorification of the devil, vilifying the authorities and thereby damning the people. A thorough content analysis of certain media will most certainly reveal an over 90% of inglorious reports, and less than 5% of stories that will ginger courage and hope. Some media organizations are horribly negative and distinctly pessimistic to the extent of creating a stake and hanging the image of the country on the crucifix.
As a media aide to an Executive Governor whose state is getting overwhelmed by a trial of insurgent criminals who maim, kill, loot, abduct and rape, bandits who created terror in the state and dared the sanctity of human values, the majority of Nigerian media chose to glorify them by promoting their daredevil attack on our national pride by freely and cheaply giving them scary heroic headlines in their war against our people. Conversely, the same media hate to promote the efforts of the Government and the security agencies in combating the criminals.
Through out the last one year when peace reigned in Zamfara state due to the peace process initiated by His Excellency, Governor Bello Mohammed, most of the media chose to be cynical in spite of the successes being recorded at that time. Most of the interviews I had to answer from many media houses were defense of the process which invariably was the only viable option we got at hand. This was even more challenging for the fact that its success was not a done deal but it required a tactical and constructive expertise to succeed.
I have the experience of several media organizations who will take no interest in any success we recorded in the fight against the bandits but will descend on me with desperate calls to get details on any disastrous incident that might have happened in the state. Worst of all is not the reportage in itself, but the way it will be reported, mostly in a manner that will present the authorities as not doing anything to save the people.
Only this week, the Zamfara State Executive Council rolled out measures to incapacitate the bandits in the state. These measures are by today, making the desired impact as the bandits are reportedly becoming agitated due to the effect of these measures. When I tried to reach out to the media for lavish publicity of these measures and their positive impact, most of them showed their open disinterest in giving it the publicity it deserved. And they didn’t. Hence, all we had was lame reportage and even cynical reports in some quarters.
In contrast to the above, in the last two days, my phone threatened to explode due to incessant calls from several media organizations. These include some media organizations I have not known before over the Kayan Maradun incident. Of course, to find out information and details of what happened and even report it is not wrong but how it is used is what matters. When reports tilt to amassing the negative without beaming the steps that bring hope and embolden the authorities, the media becomes an accomplice in disservice to the people. You happily tell the world how bad the bandits are but hate to tell the world how determined the authorities are to deal with them. You even scare the people in how invincible the bandits tend to be!
I am positive that if the aim of the media is always to find faults and not solutions, it can never be the vehicle to solving our problem but a tool for its compounding negativity. Hence, the peace and development we all yearn for might be at extreme danger from their activity. As it is, a psychological warfare is today being waged by a section of the media to accelerate the growth of the demon and the death of peace in our society. These type of media need to change.
Bappa writes from Gusau.
