NASS crisis: Media, Politics and Professionalism

The lingering crisis at the National Assembly and the accompanying buzz in the media in the past one month has again brought the media under intense scrutiny. While some people believe journalism thrives in oddities or better still, absurdities, it is not uncommon that the media provides a veritable platform for ventilation of ideas, agenda setting, as well as celebrating and engendering national, economic and social development. Hailed as a tool for bridging the increasingly widening gap between government and the governed; the rich and the poor; the oppressor and the oppressed, and as the voice of the voiceless, the media has helped in no small measure in keeping everyone on their toes. Unfortunately, however, these sacred roles of the media appear threatened by power struggle and everything, but the general interest and good of the majority. ?

Indeed, while these constitute part of media roles, still, they barely scratch the sacred ordinances that make journalism one of the respected professions in the world. Deriving enormous respect from its code of conduct, otherwise known as ethics - a guide to the way and manner the journalist conducts himself in the line of duty as watch dog over all - the exceptionally good, the irreversibly bad and the repulsively ugly - just so his reports could be seen as balanced, fair, factual, objective and done with candour, the media, has over the years acquitted itself as deserving a place in every nation's law book as the fourth estate of the realm.

But more than anything else, it is probably the issue of objectivity in the reporting of the crisis in the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and by extension, National Assembly, that has put the media on trial or so it seems, in the last few months. Borrowing from the words of Albert Eistein, a German-born Theoretical Physicist, who said that: "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything," it has become expedient that we X-ray most critically, the role of the media in the National Assembly crisis. So, how has the media faired in the management of the crisis at the National Assembly? Or, better still, could it be safe to say that the media has shown respect for journalism? ethics in the coverage of the crisis? Really, how balanced are the reports?

Indeed, without the power of clairvoyance, any discerning mind could easily notice the apparent subjectivity and arrogance of ideas that trail most of the reports in the media over the National Assembly crisis in recent times. Whether it be in the way a story is presented or its headline or both, it all peers at you directly in the face such that it is possible to hazard a guess and with accuracy, too, at where and whose interest some writers represent! No doubt, in today's society, especially the Nigerian experience, the media appears to have become a bargaining chip often deployed by some persons, including media owners and corporate organizations who aim at deceiving, blackmailing and arm-twisting unsuspecting persons at the detriment of objectivity and society at large, including but not limited to circumventing acceptable norms. This is why media reports of the National Assembly crisis has become a grave concern.

Otherwise, how would one explain fact that the media rather than maintain neutrality in the empasse, has continued to highlight perceived negatives that pitch the leadership of the National Assembly against APC leadership in so brazen a manner that points to compromise. Consciously or otherwise, we have elevated group or individual's interest as synanimous with party supremacy. For instance, I am yet to know when and how the APC decided on who gets what after it clearly stated it has no candidates in the election to the various offices of the National Assembly, just the same manner the president pledged neutrality.

Get me right, there is nothing absolutely wrong for the party to set the rule of the game or galvanise the various interests to arrive at a consensus, but imposition deviod of discussion is setting the party on a possible sucide mission. Few journalists have so far raised an eye brow if ever APC actually decided on a candidate and what process led to such a decision.

Curiously, while it is no longer news that the crisis brewed following insistence by the lawmakers to decide how their leaders would emerge and who qualifies to lead them as opposed to some party leader's preference for certain individuals though APC claimed it zoned the offices, the media has displayed record mischief in its reports. Curiously, too, not many have bothered to query why any politician would want to decide how and who leads the National Assembly. Again, the media has surprisingly failed to critically engage the parties to the crisis objectively and in so doing, explain whether or not the much touted party supremacy equates or translates to national interest, which all legislators are supposed to guard and show hunger for.

Instead, the media like a man after rats while his house burns, has shown interest in frivolities that tend to fuel hate and promote sectional and individual as opposed to national and collective interests. Whether its ownership structure or economic interest of the media house is to blame is a topic for another day, but the economy of the journalist often working under inhuman conditions and owed salary running into several months and sometimes years, cannot be divorced from this absurd development. It is no longer news that most media houses are slave camps; where the slave - the journalist - sees nothing wrong, hears nothing wrong, says nothing wrong or feels nothing wrong - yet must endure the threat of sack from his master - the publisher - who literarily, uses it as it pleases him or her!

This probably explains the dilemma of the Nigerian journalist, who, understandably, sees every report as a meal ticket and would readily sacrifice objectivity. But would the entire nation or profession suffer just because one media owner seeks to dominate everyone or a journalist wants to make a living by any means possible? One thinks that Nigeria deserves better, including the leadership of the National Assembly as with the honour of the media, too. Let journalism ethics live no matter whose ox is gored.

Oba, Chief Press Secretary to Governor Ahmed of Kwara State write via e-Mail: abdulwahaboba@gmail.com

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