Journalists Covering Protests across the country need to take note of these trends and take necessary actions to mitigate them.
It’s been days of covering and reporting the ongoing #EndBadGovernance Protest across Nigeria and courageous journalists have gone through great lengths to capture raw emotions and bring up-to-date information about the requests of the people in spite of several recorded harassments and attacks on them.
We commend all the brave journalists who continue to do their constitutional work even in the face of unmerited harassments and attacks by bad actors.
There however, in the unfolding of events, have been a noticeable trend of actions that journalists need to take note of and make necessary effort to prevent.
1. Plagiarism and Content Theft.
Although this is not a new offense in the publishing space, it is more insensitive and unforgivable to steal the information and materials that journalists went through great difficulty and even life threatening situations to obtain and parade it as your own.
Even though this act is mostly blamed on ‘content creators’ and ‘bloggers’ some journalists and media houses also partake in the act, using materials by another journalist or organization without proper crediting or attribution.
This is a very wrong practice and goes against the principles of the journalism craft.
For journalists whose works are being plagiarized and stolen, there are popular and simple ways of protecting your authorship rights and also means of seeking redress through established channels and ways. Some of them includes: Registering the copyright of your works, displaying a copyright notice on your platforms, watermarking your pictures and videos. Editing the Metadata of your content to reflect your authorship and disabling right-click and hotlinking on your website also prevent cheap copy and pasting of your text content.
With these checks in place it is easier to call-out defaulters and seek necessary redress through proper and established channels.
[READ ALSO: Conflict Reporting can’t be sheer content creation]
2. Misinformation and disinformation:
In situations like this when the public attention is focused on a popular topic the integrity of the information circulating the public space is prone to being rife with inadequacies. From simple and innocent misinformation, misquotes, wrong context and wrong interpretation to outright disinformation and peddling of falsehoods.
Journalists need to be extra careful in dealing with the information they use for their reports. Information from sources need to be double checked, even those from authorities and public figures, analysis needs to be scrutinized and publishing needs to be done with utmost care and professionalism. Times like these are when the journalism rules of thumb come into use.
Simple rules like, ‘Two sources are better than one, three sources are better than two’.
‘When in doubt, ask more questions, if still in doubt then leave out’
‘Public interest and public safety are both important but sometimes one is more than the other’
‘Being first to report is good but being accurate is very important’ and many more.
3. Walking and working in groups:
Covering public demonstration like protest is not when journalists should be a lone warrior. Journalists from different media houses may be competing for the attention of the same audience but while on the field they are all family. Especially in situations where there is concern for your safety. The recent near-death encounter of some journalists in Abuja with security operatives firing live rounds of ammunition directly at them while they hurriedly escape from the dangerous protest ground portrays the story more. Journalists from Premium Times, TheCable, News Central and others became families as they escaped in each other’s vehicles.
It is important to keep to the safety protocols and ethics of covering volatile situations and walk with colleagues or be in reasonable proximity with fellow pressmen while on the field.
You can read more tips on how to cover protest here
