First published in my column, Back–Bite, in Hotline magazine on November 22, 1994
JUST why are all journalists hypocrites? That’s the question a banker friend asked me last week when I popped into her office to say hello. We’d not met for over twelve months (I had been out of the country throughout) and hence my surprise at this unwelcoming accusation. Her grouse emanated out of consideration of the kind of coverage the political terrain in Nigeria keeps receiving since last year when so much smudge began to be interwoven into news reports, following the Abiola affair.
According to my friend, journalists in this country – and these include broadcasters, 95% of whom are government employees – have been giving biased, unsubstantiated and many times fabricated accounts of events and non-events for selfish reasons. She no longer believes news reports unless she’s there when the events occur or, surprisingly, they are corroborated by either the BBC or the VOA. But she can neither be there all the time nor always be glued to the radio. As such she finds it difficult to believe the bulletins. Nevertheless, she still manages to keep her usual date with NTA Network News, just out of habit or, as she puts it, to get first hand information on the latest government decisions.
Journalists are hardworking, she says. Hardworking enough to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for their creativity: they invent news for events that never occur, though they remain short of creating the events that could create the news.
“Sometimes you guys are bought over by officials that want a certain side of a story to be hidden from the public,” she claims, “and you don’t give a damn when carrying out that amazing irresponsibility. You want to get rich quick, and replace the movers and shakers as news sources. You cast sensational banner headlines for small stories just to make them attractive, unnecessarily heightening tension. You make me want to puke!”
Later, she asked me: “Do you believe in objectivity?”
I thought about it for a minute, and then replied, to her utter consternation, “I do, but it never works in journalism.”
And I wasn’t joking. I told her why.
Objectivity is what they taught us in school. It’s the building block of “responsible journalism.” It’s truth. But what does it mean? Simply put, never take sides in reporting an event. Be detached. Don’t let your emotion or belief-system intrude into your account Just tell the truth; let the public judge. Otherwise, you would be giving a false picture of reality. It had worked in other places, they said. American and British journalists had reported the world dispassionately. They never did so with their value judgments in the way. That’s why they got credibility
and the envy of everybody.
We believed all those lecturers perhaps because we didn’t have a choice. We wanted to get respectability as well. Besides, we also wanted to pass exams. It didn’t matter that mass communication tutors hardly ever practised journalism. Those that did never cared to teach outside the syllabus. They knew inwardly, however, that one day we would find out ourselves. Better learn in the field than inside the classroom.
Out in the field we were confronted by a different reality. Greenhorns and ambitious, we wanted to carve a niche for ourselves in the news realm. Work by the ethics. Tell the truth. Never take sides when reporting an event; don’t let your emotions dictate! When America gives Nigeria conditionalities, don’t take sides. Just report the issues as they are. In reporting a conflict, be objective. It does not matter that one thousand people in your village have been massacred because of their religious beliefs. Don’t lambast the president if he imposes an economic measure which would force 70 million Nigerians to close their small-scale businesses, like selling akara by the roadside. Don’t personalise issues.
In reality that’s never the case on the beat. What can we do with our in-built emotions? Alright, if we could shut these up, how about such pressures as the whims and caprices of our sponsors? Someone will publish the newspaper; it is their business where the money should come from. They want to present a viewpoint. They do all they can to enforce that. He who pays the paper dictates the news. As of the piper, let him blow on; the tune could be someone else’s.
News, as a result, cannot be wholly presented. Nor be read. Some of it is struck out by the simple stroke of the pen. Some of it is even manufactured to assuage certain feelings. Hence the invention of reality by news hacks bent on influencing decisions and feelings. Not knowing this, the greatest mistake the public makes, therefore, is believing every news bulleting.
The frustrating aspect of newspapering is not taking sides in issues, but not balancing lack of objectivity with the truth. Everyday we accuse the Western media of negatively reporting Africa, yet we want our journalists to emulate Western journalistic values. Despite all their pretentions to truth, Western media are never objective even if it involves reporting their internal affairs.
I think the media are only serving what they assume are the expectations of their own societies. The trouble is in that assumption, because it is often made by media men who, unelected, unilaterally decide what is good for the public. Unless the public writes back, it would continue to receive news slanted in what was felt to be its own interest.
If only journalism was about telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, journalists would not be churning out a photostat half-copy of reality, and the public would have been spared the agony of trying to believe or not believe. The whole of the news would have been told. If only it was meant to be objective, many journalists would be out of work. But because it wasn’t, many earn their bread at ease. And some of it is well buttered.
