The random newspaper, television station and online medium become vessels to itinerant grim reapers as you read. Editors of powerful news platforms, reporters and digital/mobile journalists in particular, have become death’s minstrels. Like Ogege, the spirit with embroidered woe, they have turned serpents, sleeping in Nigeria’s undergrowth, to merge with the hue of the prevailing wild.
They forget that when Nigeria eventually submerges in the mire of bestial elements, even the press will be cannibalised. Nonetheless, the local media, like global news agencies, serve as emissaries and enablers of the dark, vicious lusts and ‘murders’ committed by politicians, industry titans and multinationals. How? By ignoring their monstrosities and couching their ugliness in beautiful English.
It is hardly surprising that the politician and magnate remain the subjects of Nigerian media’s perennial fascination. Of these lot, the coarse and ferocious, wanton and bloodcurdling, are gleefully celebrated and coated in ornamental language by the press. The average newspaper, TV station and online medium wildly celebrates the ‘achievements’ and ‘statesmanship’ of established and closet criminals in public offices because it is very profitable to do so.
To the press, it never matters that a state governor diverted and expended public fund to ship cronies and political associates abroad, to witness his lavish wedding to a trophy wife. The media hardly cares that a governor would splurge on an insolent ward’s wedding ceremony, at home and abroad, at a time he has refused to pay workers’ salaries and improve infrastructure citing ‘economic recession’ as his reason.
Very few journalists are indeed, worried, that Nigeria’s incumbent public officers, like predecessors, have fleeced the country to the bones, in the guise of operational budgets and emoluments. State fund, stolen and diverted by these elements would attain judicious use if applied to nobler constitutional projects, like the provision of crucial infrastructure, security, potable water, stable electricity among others.
The media hardly cares that such money could have saved lives if used to repair bad roads or renovate moribund primary health care centres. Thus while poor, underprivileged electorate die in ghastly road accidents; while thousands of newborn breathe their last and their mothers’ extinguish to birth complications, the Nigerian press obsesses about the ‘sterling statesmanship,’ ‘compassion,’ ‘brilliance,’ and ‘influence’ of the men and women responsible for their untimely demise.
Save some very few journalists and media that actually care, the majority of Nigeria’s Fourth Estate do not give a hoot about dying mothers and infants in Nigeria’s hospital labour rooms and corridors of death. They do not care that while the citizenry’s beloved die prematurely in extreme and avoidable circumstances, most incumbent and former senators, governors, presidents and even local council chairmen, sponsor their trophy wives, daughters and daughters-in-law abroad, to give birth in safer circumstances.
Rather than speak truth to power, characters that could be mistaken for kindred spirits with the viper, scorpion, dung beetle, and hyena are elevated, worshipped and celebrated as the rarest of gems by the Nigerian press.
The media celebrates these incarnations of humanity’s debris because doing otherwise could be suicidal. Politicians own the media. And tycoons determine the news. They place advertisements and pay the salaries of the men and women by whose professionalism or otherwise Nigeria accesses her news and information needs. Thus the quality of journalism you get.
It is foolhardy of anyone to expect a journalist who hasn’t received salaries in eight months to be objective about a news story involving a commoner and a politician. The commoner will ignite his conscience with tears but the politician will silence it with hefty ‘brown envelopes.’
It is deceitful to anticipate fairness, honesty, integrity and accuracy from mainstream and online media whose existence and continuity are determined by the whims of influential politicians and business moguls.
But the Nigerian society demands purity, integrity and impartiality from the press all the same.
Journalists are accused as partners in crime with the Nigerian ruling class. To a great extent, this is true. It is also true that the Nigeria gets the journalism it deserves.
Norman Mailer jests that “Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.” This is often true. Sadly, journalists are still the butt of the most demeaning jokes and premeditated put-downs. Nobody thinks much of a journalist.
In the estimation of big business, the citizenry and ruling class, the journalist, whatever his designation or job title, is the manipulable pawn and necessary evil that has to be courted and tolerated. The descent and humiliation of the journalist still persists in the hands of his employer; salaries still range from N15, 000 per month at entry level to N100, 000 per month at managerial level in most media houses.
This resonates badly for the country. The principles of fairness and social responsibility of the press require that the journalist who would adorn the cloak of defender of the masses’ rights should be upright and flawless in character, work and personal ethics. Such admirable traits are impossible with Nigerian journalists because due to their constant and methodical impoverishment by their employers, they entertain less scruples and eagerly sell their souls to devils among the political, business class for ‘brown envelopes.’
Yet the society seeks fulfillment of tyrant fantasies. Such fantasies often vary from the destruction of an unpopular government or despot to a worn-out civilization. Reality however, affirms the duplicity of such mindset. In Nigeria, where voters are continually tamed and kept on a leash by a ruling class that capitalises on obvious handicaps: their impulsiveness, insensibility to reason and judgment, and overt sentimentality, it becomes increasingly difficult to nurture and enable a fair, vibrant press.
Despite its faults, society conveniently picks on a scapegoat for its infinite timidity and cluelessness: the press. The journalist is thus expected to serve as the conscience and moral compass of the society, challenging the government and checking the excesses of the ruling class, selflessly and uncompromisingly.
As utopian fantasies go, these are noble expectations of the journalist but the Nigerian society ignores its cultural shift from conventional morality to unbridled hedonism. It assumes, hypocritically, that the press will continually give it honest and developmental news even as every segment of the society strives to unmoor the journalist from his role as a crucial appendage of the nation’s critical mob.
The public, comprising big business, the government, and civil societies among other mob segments, vilify any journalist or news medium that seeks to educate and engage rather than entertain and perpetuate their biased definitions of reality. Several organisations are placing media advertisements and parceling expensive gifts to halt publications or shut down reportage that could hurt their interests even as you read.
Contemporary Nigeria embraces the horrendous pageant that has turned news into paid publicity and mindless entertainment. In response, the journalist slips to survival mode and kowtows to lusts and vanities of modern, politically-correct society.
Beneath the mindless glamour, cultural and ethical decline however, an insidious reality festers in the death of hope and incandescence of tragedy.
At the centre of the turmoil is the journalist whose fate is so critically bound with the country’s.
Rather than pose a challenge to the system that domesticates and enslaves him, he chooses the easiest way out and plays junkyard dog to tyrant cabals and the predatory bunch constituting the nation’s citizenry and political class. He assumes the role of a poseur and pretends to fight for the interest of the public. This sad charade will end badly for everyone.
