With 2015 elections around the corner, and campaign tensions imminent, media professionals from both print and broadcast in Lagos State were, at a two-day workshop last week, psyched on the need to be sensitive in presenting conflict-sensitive reports professionally without fuelling undue flames by publishing reliable and unbiased information to their reading public, while also being conscious of hints that could engender violence, when relaying issues affecting children and women, Joke Kujenya reports.
When reporting conflicts, journalists are often faced with the challenge of de-escalating misconceptions that could lead to tensions. As such, reporters, based on the ethics of their profession to uphold national interests, are cautioned over time to self-censor. By so doing, conflicts inciting subject matter that could lead to hostilities in society would be doused.
To forestall such occurrence, an average journalist, trainers caution, must see conflict as first, a battle and then, conflates it with violence, and later views it as a zero, a no-go area. Thus, “when in doubt, leave out”, “cause no harm” were slogans that played out prominently at a two-day workshop on:
Given this concept, Ms Olutoyin Falade, Executive Director, Innovative Strategy for Human Development (ISHD), hammered it firmly on the consciousness of participants to always do reporting in a way that will resolve existing problems, rather than making issues worse than they met it, noting that, if journalists are conflict and gender-sensitive in their reporting, “your family will love you.”
Falade, using an interactive approach with the participants to deliver her treatise, shared the theme: ‘Reporting Conflict in Nigeria and Child Sensitive Reporting’, respectively. She recalled, among others, that between 1980 and 2009, over a hundred violent conflicts left in their wake socio-political, economic and psychological losses and pains, while over 150, 000 people got killed and properties worth billions in naira were destroyed due to ethno-religious feud in some parts of Northern Nigeria. Scenarios as these then behove on the media to examine critically the indices that ignite conflict and, with every ounce of professionalism, avoid it in their reports.
She defined conflict as a setting that involves disagreement, clash, collision or a struggle or contest between two or more parties. Using Laue’s 2002 explanation of conflict, Falade said “it can degenerate to violence as an escalated competition at any system level between groups whose aim is to gain advantage in the area of power, resources, interest, and needs and at least one of the groups believes that this dimension of the relationship is mutually incompatible. It is also a manifestation of fear from inability of individuals or groups to accommodate their differences.”
She said if journalists do not take such multi-faceted definition of conflict into consideration in their reportage, conflicts can assume various dimensions and degenerate into intricate situations that can be difficult to manage.
Media professionals, therefore, need to understand that conflict has two classifications namely: functional and dysfunctional.
Functional conflict improves the quality of decisions, stimulates creativity and innovations for positive change, while dysfunctional conflict leads to retarded communication, reduced group cohesiveness and a subordination of goals to in-fighting and explosive violence, she said.
She also said that the media should understand their aim of reporting conflict, one of which is that it is a threat to societal survival, peaceful coexistence and system endurance.
“Conflict reporting is beyond the media’s traditional role of informing, educating and entertaining the society. It is more about translating into their surveillance function in the society if well handled. This is because people depend largely on the media to create images, form opinions and quite often provide guidance on issues of conflict. Media readers also provide early warning signs for authorities to take proactive measures, informed explanations on topical issues to check spiralling but to generate ideas on resolving or, as well, reducing conflicts while publicising plights of victims.
Falade also enumerated why the media often falls for ‘temptation’ during periods of conflicts. She said, “conflict is an ‘attractive’ source of news that is ‘the bread and butter’ of journalism. It sells as ready raw materials that reflect the country’s socio-cultural diversities, among others. Hence, the media, through its selective reporting process, tries to determine what the public see and think and thereby inadvertently contributes to the escalation of conflict based on how they say what they say.
As a result of this, the media ought to be sensitive in reporting conflict-related stories. To do this, the media has to be conscious of its duty in promoting, by selective reporting, prejudicial stereotypes about groups and individuals, inter-group conflicts out of their fundamental socio-economical, political and other contexts. They mustn’t make generalised statements not supported by facts and figures and ensure they attribute statements by individuals to collectives, not publishing of rumours as facts and many others.
Also, in a seemingly variance of perspectives, many of which are critical, the trainer, Falade, said that the media need to use multi-level sampling in trying to capture the variance in the heterogeneous scenario, thereby safeguarding their respective safety and understanding of pattern of a conflict.
“This then,” she said, “takes me to the duty of the media in reporting as it affects the underage children.”
She began this expose by defining who a child is. She said, “a child, as defined in Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary, is a young human being who is not yet an adult. A son or daughter of any adult or for the purposes of the BBC Editorial Guidelines, someone aged under 15; while young people are aged 15, 16 and 17. Noting that these are not legal definitions and so, they differ from the UN Convention on the rights of the child as someone under 18, she said, the age difference might point to a possible tension between child rights advocates and some journalists, and so, it becomes an issue worth discussing in the context of news coverage.”
Against this backdrop, on day two, Falade said children and the media have become a growing concern as children of every age in our societies get a daily dose of television, video games and music lyrics. And while such media can provide education and entertainment, the same can damage children’s psyche. She added that research shows that exposure to violent media can result in aggressive attitudes and violent behaviour in some children and adolescents. Therefore, the dignity and rights of every child must be respected in every circumstance – interviewing and reporting on children which requires that special attention is required to ensure their rights to privacy and confidentiality, have their opinions heard, make them participate in decisions affecting them and be protected from harm and retribution, including the potential of harm and retribution, among others, are the responsibility of the media.
Adding her voice to Communication and Listening Skills for media professionals in Nigeria, Mrs. Vivian Emesowum, Executive Director, Grassroots People and Gender Development Centre, noted that if journalists listen to the voice of their writings, it will better help them to communicate conflict-sensitive messages with less harm to their reading societies.
She took the class through the rudiments of communication which include speaking, listening and contexts, which change how people receive what is said and determine their reaction. To, therefore, ameliorate unexpected divergence reactions, media professionals need to be conscious of their listening, observation, attention and questioning skills in relaying their messages to their teeming readers and viewers, as the case may be, and above all to the multi-faceted end receivers, Emesowum said.
