 |
| Lai Mohammed |
In more intellectually-conscious climes, last week’s
off-the-record drama would have sparked scholarly incursions into the changing
values of 21st-century journalism. It would have triggered intense concerns
about the gaping hole of self-regulation that must be filled if the media must
bountifully harness the pluses of Internet-driven media explosion.
“Journalism entails a high degree of public trust. To earn and maintain this trust, it is morally imperative for every journalist and every news medium to observe the highest professional and ethical standards” — Preamble, Code of Ethics for Nigerian Journalists (1998).
For
three days in March 1998, some of the country’s finest journalists, plus
newspaper owners and other stakeholders, gathered in Ilorin, the capital of
Kwara State, to forge what till date remains the most recent version of the
ethical code guiding journalism practice in Nigeria. The Nigerian Guild of
Editors (NGE), the Nigerian Press Council (NPC), the Nigerian Union of
Journalists (NUJ), the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigerian (NPAN)
were all represented. The ensuing document was an upgrade on the one in
existence since 1979.
Exactly
20 years on, Kwara State returns to the summit of a delicate yet thrilling
debate about ethical journalism, not because another gathering of journalists
has been convoked but because a son of the soil has fallen victim to the
relative obscurity to which the 1998 document has fallen.
On
Thursday, Lai Mohammed, the Kwara-born information minister, was seen telling
reporters in a viral video that the government was spending N3.5 million
monthly on feeding Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, the Shi’a sect leader who has been in
detention since December 2015. In the six-minute-fifteen-second video, Lai can
be heard four different times saying the information should be kept “off the
record”. In an instance, he specifically says: “This should be off the record…
I am only giving you all this background information so you know how to write
your story.”
Lai’s
off-the-record revelations were passed on to the public by internet platform,
Oak TV. Following Lai’s cry of betrayal, Oak TV delivered a letter of apology
to the minister, and claimed to have sanctioned “all the team members
involved”. The only problem is Nigerians won’t stop discussing the incredulity
of feeding a detainee with such humongous sum. Of more journalistic and
scholarly importance, however, the debate rages: should Oak TV — and the legion
of media outfits that jumped on it — have published the video?
Is there, therefore, a clash of
interests between the public’s right to know and the journalist’s respect for
off-the-record information? No. Combining these two provisos would mean
something like: ‘the public has a right to know, but through any means other
than the publication of off-the-record information’.
Before delving into the debate about the propriety of publishing the video, it has to be said that something is fundamentally wrong with this so-called regime of change if it truly spends N3.5 million monthly on an accused for whom it has disobeyed a court order for his release, and at a time the government can’t just muster a measly N30,000 as minimum wage for workers. Maybe some will also argue, perhaps rightly so, that Lai got his comeuppance in the end — for being such a notorious inventor of propaganda for the selfish interests of the then opposition party and a cynical manipulator of information to the benefit of the now ruling government.
Still,
should that video have been published? The answer — and it is not hard to
explain — is no. Section 4 of the Ethical Code, tagged
‘Privilege/Non-disclosure’, states clearly: “(i) a journalist should observe the universally accepted
principle of confidentiality and should not disclose the source of information
obtained in confidence; (ii) a journalist should not breach an agreement with a
source of information obtained as ‘off the record’ or as ‘background
information.’” Not only did Lai say “off the record”, he particularly
clarified he was only offering the journalists background information for their
stories.
Although
they haven’t expressly said so, most of those arguing for the spilling of the video
can fall back on other sections of the Ethical Code. In the second, titled
‘Accuracy and fairness’, the code says “the public has a right to know”. A part
of the document’s preamble also states: “In the exercise of these duties, a journalist should always have
healthy regard for the public interest.”
Is
there, therefore, a clash of interests between the public’s right to know and
the journalist’s respect for off-the-record information? No. Combining these
two provisos would mean something like: ‘the public has a right to know, but
through any means other than the publication of off-the-record information’.
And this is possible. In this specific case, the answers are not set in stone,
but there are a number of possibilities.
One
— probably the least desirable and surely not in a video — would be to state
Lai’s claim but attribute it to a federal government source, rather than him.
In any case, according-to-a-source stories are a permanent fixture in Nigerian
journalism. Another would be to take Lai’s claim to the interior minister or
the director-general of the Department of State Services (DSS), both of who
should know; whether they say yes or no, it’s a story. Yet another is to
attempt to force the information out of the government with a Freedom of Information
(FoI) request, with failure to respond gifting the journalist the liberty to
announce Lai’s claim, even without revealing the source. The possibilities are
limitless. Lai’s revelation, in fact, can be the springboard for investigative
reporting to ascertain the cost of feeding or generally caring for a DSS
detainee or an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) detainee or a
prisoner. Or for El-Zakzaky himself!
I have been taken aback by
arguments reprimanding Lai for saying on camera something he didn’t want
published. Baffling thought pattern, actually. As long as he wasn’t on live TV,
and knowing the taped videos would still be edited pre-publication, he acted
within reasoning.
The wide publication of the Lai video also raises a string of worrying questions about the practice of journalism in the new-media age. One that personally bothers me is the growing transformation of the media to an entity that sees itself as useful solely for news dissemination — what’s happening to educating the readers? What’s happening to analysing, interpreting and processing the raw news so that readers are better placed to make informed decisions with them? This shrinking of robust journalism is one reason Lai’s revelation was not considered valuable beyond its news mileage.
It
is also wondrous how the media is comfortable with setting a certain standard
for the rest of the society, yet lowering it for itself. For example, over the
past two weeks, the media has been vociferous in its criticism of the Army for
gunning down dozens of Shi’ites in Abuja. That criticism is valid because the
Army’s Rules of Engagement (RoE) state clearly when and how a soldier can apply
fire. There must be “grave danger” to the life of the soldier; and even then,
“fire must be aimed and controlled”. The RoE forbid “indiscriminate firing”.
All these the Army flouted, and for this it was roundly criticised by the
media. How then can the media fall short of the rules of its own rules of
engagement?
I
have been taken aback by arguments reprimanding Lai for saying on camera
something he didn’t want published. Baffling thought pattern, actually. As long
as he wasn’t on live TV, and knowing the taped videos would still be edited
pre-publication, he acted within reasoning. A few months ago, I taught an
investigative journalism class during which a participant questioned the
morality of undercover reporting; he just couldn’t understand why a journalist
would obtain information in an environment where he isn’t known to be one. In
one of my answers, I shared a finding from Borno State during an undercover
adventure in June 2016. But first, I asked that my disclosure should be off the
record. And the cameras were on, too. During that trip, I found myself in a
certain room where there was access to the official — not the press-release
manipulations — number, out of the total number, of soldiers who had been
killed by Boko Haram in just the first six months of that year. And, were the
numbers staggering?! I gave the figure to the class but I again impressed it on
them that this information couldn’t be made public. All I wanted to prove to
the class was this: there are certain information you will never have unless
you go undercover.
That
this debate has existed at all is one more reminder of how the disruption of
journalism practice by technology is not all gains. In more
intellectually-conscious climes, last week’s off-the-record drama would have
sparked scholarly incursions into the changing values of 21st-century
journalism. It would have triggered intense concerns about the gaping hole of
self-regulation that must be filled if the media must bountifully harness the
pluses of Internet-driven media explosion. Personally, I remain worried that
while the audience for journalism is larger today than it was, say, a decade or
two ago, the mindset is remarkably smaller.
‘Fisayo Soyombo,
former editor of the TheCable and the International
Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), tweets @fisayosoyombo.
