Recently, President of the Senate, Senator David Mark, delivered a keynote address at the Senate Press Corps Retreat in Umuahia, Abia Sate. The theme of the retreat was The Role of the Media in Promoting Good Governance. The event had in audience the state governor, Chief Theodore Orji; Senators Ayogu Eze, Eyinnaya Abaribe, Nkechi Nwaogwu; a host of media practitioners and activists as well as other eminent Nigerians.
When Senator Mark was invited to the podium to deliver his address, he recalled his interaction with the members of the Senate Press Corps who came to invite him to the occasion. According to him, members of the corps gave him the liberty to speak his mind on the workings of the media. He added that the power conferred on him by the corps also granted him the authority to criticise the media.
He, however, noted that he would thread with caution “because a goat will not visit a lion’s den on the pretext that the lion is sick and return home in one piece.” As his observation sent the large audience laughing, the president of the Senate quickly added that he was wise enough to know that the liberty given to him by the Senate Press Corps was a Greek gift.
Senator Mark also informed the audience that since he was quoted out of context on the ‘telephone is not for the poor matter,’ he had learnt to read a prepared text wherever he went to deliver an address.
“I have challenged anybody to show me a quote in my own words where I said telephone is not for the poor. Nobody has been able to produce it. Yet, I have to defend this everyday that what I said was if you must use a phone, then, you have to pay for the service.”
Noting that he always love to speak from the heart, the Senate president said he hoped and prayed that whatever he would present in his address to the Senate Press Corps at the event would not be misconstrued and misrepresented to Nigerians who were not present at the event.
It was as if Senator Mark saw tomorrow or had a premonition of how his innocuous remark on the social media would be misinterpreted and misrepresented by mischief makers who have been lurking around to attack him.
In his address, the Mark had asserted that “the emergence of the social media like Facebook, Twitter, blackberry messenger, YouTube etc. have changed the face of the media practice by making information sharing easier, faster and quicker. But this is not without its demerits. Social media have become a threat to the ethics of media practice and good governance because of their accessibility and absolute freedom. Every freedom carries a responsibility. Even in advanced democracies, where we all agree that good governance is practiced, there is no absolute freedom.”
Continuing, Senator Mark expressed the belief that “there must be a measure to check the negative tendencies of the social media in our country. I say this because media practice, particularly journalism, process news gathering and dissemination. It also operates a feedback mechanism and where the practitioners erred, there is room for rebuttal. But in the social media, a faceless character can post any information that is absolutely false and misleading but will never retract it. At the end of the day, one is bombarded with questions over what one has no business with.
“I suggest that schools of mass communication and journalism should review their curricular to include the operations of social media.”
But hardly had he returned to his seat after the address when mischief makers began to work on their blogs in the social media. The message of the Senate president, delivered in simple language, has not only been misconstrued, but also misrepresented. It has also begun to spread like wildfire. Mark has become a victim of the fear he had expressed before his address.
The wildest among the reactions said Senator Mark had called for censorship of the social media. There were those who said the president of the Senate stated that social media was being used to insult leaders of the nation like him, while others became as mundane as alleging that he wanted the social media to stop criticising those in authority and to write only their good sides. All these are absolute falsehood.
From the excerpts of the speech quoted above, it is manifest that the Senate president neither called for the censorship of the social media nor alleged that the media were being used to insult Nigerian leaders like him. He also did not ask the social media to stop criticising the Federal Government and write only on its good sides. Rather, he called for measures that would check the negative tendencies inherent in the use of the social media. That, I believe, is a genuine call that would help refocus the media.
One would, therefore, have expected online publishers to join the clarion call made by Senator Mark that the assault to news gathering and dissemination being perpetrated on the social media be checked. There are many instances when social media activists have posted falsehood and readers believed them only to discover later that the post was bogus. How does this help the credibility of the social media? For instance, few days after members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) posted to Bauchi State went to camp, a section of the social media posted falsehood that Boko Haram sect had attacked the Bauchi camp and about 50 people killed. It was soon discovered that the information was false and totally mischievous. How can this be justified? Yet, Senator Mark did not call for sanctions against those who made such posts, but called for a check against such negative tendencies.
For the avoidance of doubt, the Senate president’s interest in the media has never been hidden and he demonstrated this in his interfaces with the stakeholders of the industry before the passage of the Freedom of Information Bill by the sixth National Assembly.
Even at the Umuahia event, he expressed kind words for the media and its conscientious operators by saluting “the courage, doggedness and steadfastness of the Nigerian media.” Senator Mark also acknowledged the fact that “the press has been in the vanguard for the promotion and sustenance of democracy we now enjoy. Even the struggle for independence was pioneered and fought for by the Nigerian media.
“Sometimes, I do disagree with you, but the media generally has fared well. They can still do more by deliberately planning and sustaining the efforts to bridge the information gap between the leaders and the led. The press can achieve this if it applies the basic principles of patriotism, accountability, transparency, and objectivity in the discharge of its duty,” he further said.
Senator Mark did not make any gaffes in his keynote address to the Senate Press Corps on the role of the media in promoting good governance. Rather, his critics, who have continually ignored the text of his address which he read in the public, are mischief makers.
Ologbondiyan is Special Adviser (Media and Publicity) to the Senate president
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