… Says societal peace is a condition for development
A clarion call has gone to media practitioners to be mindful of their roles in ensuring peace before, during and after the 2019 elections and beyond.
This appeal was given by the Director of the International Press Centre, IPC, Lagos-Nigeria, Mr Lanre Arogundade in his welcome address at a two-day Workshop on Best Practices and Professional Reporting of the Electoral process.
The training truly critically examined the interconnections between the public, the media and elections towards developing an agenda that seeks to strengthen the role of the media in facilitating a credible electoral process.
According to Arogundade, the training aimed at bringing to the front burners the prerequisite to hone the skills of journalists in the professional and ethical reportage of democratic processes and elections as well as commit to professional, conflict sensitive, citizen focused, gender focused and digital reporting of the 2019 elections.
“It is expected that the media during the 2019 general elections with the facilitation of election stakeholders in Nigeria will follow the global trends in the use media as a political communication tool, create equal opportunities for Nigerian politicians and political parties to tap into the opportunities offered by media to reach and engage their constituents and voters and use media tools to improve the efficiency of election observation.
“In addition the media have a critical agenda setting role to support the integrity and credibility of elections. Not only must they take a lead role in ensuring that citizens are adequately mobilized, but they should also ensure that the entire process is open to public scrutiny.” Arogundade concluded.
In their interaction with our correspondent, many of those who participated in the training said that they were further reminded on the need to understand and imbibe the principles of fairness, diversity and objectivity in reporting the electoral process and the elections as well as ensure best practice reporting for the 2 019 elections and beyond.
They commended the European Union Support for Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) project.
“We were able to learn more about many new trends in the media world. Also, we were reminded on the need to follow the ethics of the profession.”
Prof. Muyiwa Popoola of Communication and Media Studies, Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo-State, urged journalists to adopt conflict-sensitive style in reporting the election processes, election and post-election because societal peace is a condition for development
Speaking during the two-day workshop in Osogbo-Osun State, Popoola and other facilitators said that the media must be socially-responsible, peace and development-driven in their reportage while avoiding hate speeches.
“The media must watch out in order not to be tools in the hands of politicians. Nigerian media, in their own capacities, serve as shadow parties to political conflicts that are rooted in hate speech and vituperations in the polity; thus having pervasive influences on journalistic contents and reportorial directions. Nigerian reporters have a responsibility to cover the facts, but they also have a responsibility to avoid unnecessarily stoking hatred and violence, especially when religious or political tensions are running high.”
“Because of the reality that societal peace is a strong condition for development, a major expectation from a democratic, participant media system is that such a press avoids reporting what divides the sides in the conflict-prone environment.”
Popoola urged management of media houses to continually train journalists to better understand hate speeches and avoid such. “A good Fourth Estate of the Realm is driven by professionalism and ethical standards.”
In their presentations, Mr Taiwo Obe, Founder of Journalism Clinic and the Founder of Africa Check, Mr David Ajikobi took participants through many new trends in best practices in journalism and advised participants to always double check their facts, evaluate stories and be wary of just posting stories for the sake of breaking stories.
In addition, Obe enjoined participants to always get new skills, make best use of all social media handles, start and listen to social media conversations, follow newsmakers on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook among others, noting, “Use Twitter to make sense, use google alerts, and interrogate facts. Our business is to interrogate and provide answers to questions.”
Of more equal importance to this Reporter is from David Ajikobi, saying that fact checking is very important to assess the quality of information sent out by politicians most especially during elections because fact-checking saves life. “We have had situations where wrong information lead to riots that claimed people’s lives. Hence, we must be careful.”
This we were taught to do through various fact checking indices like historical data, facts comparisons, authentic available statistics among others. By and large, the workshop was quite educative and enlightening with great facilitators.
