Journalism is a noble profession because information is knowledge and knowledge, power. In moments of disaster, information is a preferred priority to relief supply.
Without information, reliefs can’t get to where and when they are needed. Without the press, public opinion remains private. There is no cause that succeeds without the active support of the press. A nation which lacks a vibrant press lacks information and power.
With greater awareness of the public’s right to know, the media has become a powerful tributary flowing into the great river of global life with considerable change in the conduct of human affairs. It tries hard to tell people what has just happened.
When you consider the often shortage of time available in which to ascertain facts, one would agree that our newspapers, internet blogs, television and radios plus our social networks do this job surprisingly well. They summarize and depict fairly accurately the chief events in people’s life. They expose, analyze, argue, describe and amuse.
Without the media, people would know much less of the world in which they live. Anyone who does not want to bear witness to truth must muzzle the press.
If media is a vehicle, journalists are its drivers and fuel. In the freedom age, journalists seek no longer to know why, when and how mangoes ripe, they want to know the size of our genitals, what we do with them and how we use them.
To escape the eagle eyes of undercover journalists, businesses now spend a vast amount of time on corporate compliance; the police kill and run away to avoid being accused of institutionally brutal and corrupt; the army devote energies to the human rights within its ranks instead of working out what it needs to fight; world democracies can no longer trust themselves to behave ethically and are setting up ethics committees. The intelligence services go to court- and sometimes lose- when they seek to defend the secrecy on which their work depends. Journalists wish that the would-be clergy, pope present CVs and fill application forms, going against the ancient principle that no one who thinks he should be a clergy is suitable to be one.
If knowledge is power, journalism has contributed to crime and evils. In a bid to make marketable headlines, journalists have exposed the society to crimes formerly unknown to them. The world media reports on kidnap activities in Sri Lanka, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, etc might have fuelled its choice in Niger Delta as a means for resource control, occult compensation and later as lucrative criminality.
What of journalists working with the so-called human rights organizations? In seeking human rights violations, they have fueled hatred and revenge leading to more abuses. Take the killing of Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf, for instance; not till the BBC video clips of the captured came up, everybody had believed he died in gun-battle. That video clip has done Nigeria more harm than good. The Human Right Watch which championed that campaign appears to close their eyes to pogrom being committed by fanatic avenging the killing. Media conflicting reports have also prolonged the insurgency, sometimes disclosing security secrets prompting the sect to continually re-strategize.
Politically, journalists have encouraged leaders’ reluctance to bear witness. Those in authority have become more pre-occupied with self-protecting procedures than with the needs of the citizens they serve. If you are constantly subject to a scrutiny which tends to see you as guilty unless you are proved innocent, you will become more and more risk-averse. If you always have to look over your shoulder, you cannot look forward. During electioneering, candidates deliver thousands of words with 99 per cent of these passing unnoticed.
What they fear is one sentence or phrase that will get them in trouble. The journalist, Jeremy Paxman thought it quite appropriate to ask Mr Hague of UK why nobody liked him, why he wouldn’t let his wife speak in public and similar questions which if asked of one ordinary citizen by another would earn the questioner a punch on the nose. In the last presidential media chat, despite political tenseness of the moment, Mr Martins Olojah of The Guardian asked President Jonathan his personal interest in the constitutional review and if he would contest for 2nd tenure if the amendments turn to his favour. In both cases, the conviction of the age meant that Messrs. Hague and Jonathan had to answer with studious politeness.
Journalism has gone too arrogant; the media has set itself as prosecution, judge and jury without giving the accused the due process of law. In pursuit of possible iniquity, they regard almost any method of inquiry as legitimate, climbing over walls, tracking perfume of conjugal beds and celebrities’ undies, hacking e-mails and breaking into people’s call/sms logs.
With the era of standing patiently at the door of great politician or prelate or soldier to favour them with insipid words gone, journalists now barge in, too arrogantly, to interrogate and arraign. Journalists are regurgitators of information and also critics of public affairs. They expose truth or wrongdoing but they pass judgment on the information received by deciding whether or not to publish it and what prominence to give to it.
The power of information inclines a journalist to the abuse of positions, more so in Nigeria. The one who brings a message soon ascertains that his role gives him power. By giving a false or an exaggerated message, by withholding or by delivering it at a great speed, by shouting it out when it should be spoken softly or by whispering it when it should be proclaimed from the housetops, he can affect events, advance or retard someone’s cause, earn money or lose it, make or break a career.
The journalist knows this and unless he is a saint, he will sometimes exploit this knowledge. Sadly, no journalist is a saint. God help us!
