MEDIA NEUTRALITY, CREDIBILITY AND THE EJIOGBE EJIOGBECONCEPT. When my very good brother Adegbenro Adebanjo some weeks ago was complaining bitterly about non inclusion of media men in the line-up or list of those who received the national award and put forward some questions and names of certain individual in his argument, my first reaction was that I wanted to share the post and ask same question because I also know a whole lot of guys in the media be it in the print media or electronic media who are eminently qualified if not better qualified than some of the names that find their way into the list of awardees. Ive always been of the opinion that media practitioners are getting less credit than they deserved, then GBOSA!! the Prince Segun Adeseguns letter dropped and Mr Fagbenles column in THE PUNCH news paper also dropped, then Prince Segun Adesguns replied to that column where he coined the now very popular EJIOGBE, EJIOGBE, EJIOGBE concept of neutrality also dropped. Since the eye opening, EJIOGBE, EJIOGBE concept of neutrality was brought up by Prince Segun Adesegun, certain questions has been going through my mind and I started looking into some write up and comments by some media men and my findings surprises even me in all my optimism. what we have now are mostly partisan, lopsided and a cleverly hiding political agenda presented as neutral and unbiased analysis of both current affairs and political reportage. I discovered that most of our Neutral writers, columnist and producer of radios and TV programmes are now pasting posters as aspirant under PDP, Apc, Apga etc all I needed to do was to just go back few weeks or months to check some of the writeup and comments made by the so called objective and neutral analysts and I discovered that there have been systematic bending of facts and true position of things in favor of their preferred political party or candidate. A situation where those who are suppose to report and inform the public on activities of a particular public office holder or government are lobbying and in some cases fighting to become special adviser on media, media adviser, senior special assistance on media, minister or commissioner for information, chief press secretary, media consultants and media contractor to that same office holder or government, you can imagine how objective and neutral the report, writeup, commentary or even simple argument such as persons contribution can be on matter that affects such a person whose favor he desperately seeks. There is absolutely nothing wrong with media practitioners going into politics same way Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers and other professionals do, if anything, it adds value to the polity but the very bitter truth is that the media is supposed to inform and sometimes shape public view of happenings around them including but not limited to governance and is expected to do so without fear or favour, but becoming partisan affects the credibility of such individual and the perception of him/her in the eyes of the public which is very important especially on matters that affects the political party such person belong to or when he/she opined on others. One can never overemphasis the fact that the national awards have been infected with credibility virus due to certain individuals dead or living who has been recipients of some of the highest honors in the land, but it is also very important that we ensure that in our quest to sanitize that process we must do it in such a way that we dont stain it the more. It is common knowledge that certain Tv station have difficulties in reporting anything good done by the pdp, just as another station will not give prominence to positive activities of the APC, it is also a known fact that some newspaper outfit are divide along party sympathy and patronage. So therefore, a media practitioner who is a card carrying member of a political party or an aspirant on the platform of a political party is 95% most likely going to write or report in favor of his/her preferred political party even though many of them still want the public to see them as neutral and unbiased professionals, but in reality they are what Prince Segun Adesegun described as EJIOGBE, EJIOGBE, EJIOGBE journalists. I shared the pain and frustration of my brother Adegbenro Adebanjo, and I know how painful it can be to see what is happening in the case of the national merit award, but I sincerely believe there is a lot to be desired in the way some media practitioners in Nigeria operate and carry themselves, a situation where media practitioner deliberately twist facts and bend the truth in favor of individuals, political parties or even cooperate bodies and still claim to be neutral and objective can only be described as EJIOGBE journalism. The consolation here is the fact that even as the EJIOGBE journalists are having nice time bringing the name and image of this all important and noble profession into disrepute, we still have a whole lot of media men who are pride of our dear nation and Africa as a whole, YES we still have TV stations here in Nigeria whose credibility can favourably compete with any TV stations worldwide (with no apology to anyone, I will rather miss all local TV news than miss Channels TV news at 10) and I prayerfully hope they dont get infected with the EJIOGBE virus. some of our friends actually find themselves in the ejiogbe lineup because they work for media organizations owned or co-owned by politicians or people with political interests so they become unwilling ejiogbe for as long as they work with such media platforms . Despite the ejiogbes, YES we still have credible columnists, reporters, presenters whose column and reports are read religiously like holy books and their programs followed with highest interest because they in spite of all odds still uphold the highest standard for which the noble profession is known, but unfortunately the EJIOGBE JOURNALISTS have found their way up the ladder and its really affecting the public perception of the media to the extent that people now pick up newspapers and tune to TV and radio stations on the basis of awon tiwa niyen. So when next the national merit awards comes around, we expect to see deserved men from the media(print and electronic) on the list. Thanks my Darling brother Adegbenro Adebanjo for raising the question.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 07:08:48 +0000
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