Despite criticisms of unethical journalism practice in the social media space, senior media practitioners have urged journalists to embrace the new age media without neglecting the ethics of the media profession.
They made the call at a recent media colloquium organised to celebrate the 60th birthday of columnist and publisher of Genevive magazine, Betty Irabor in Lagos.
Adhering to the ethics according to the media executives would enable members of the public to easily identify, respect and trust credible online platforms.
While speaking on the conference theme, “Truth and Integrity: Journalism in the Age of Social Media, Fake News and Citizen Reporting”, Editor of defunct Next newspaper, Kadaria Ahmed, said “the rise of fake news through the social media comes with a new opportunity which ethical media practitioners can leverage on.”
According to her, as false news chokes the media space, many media audience would also be on the lookout for credible platforms where news can be verified.
She said “This dichotomy that seems to suggest that traditional media is good and new media is bad is just simply untrue.”
” You get a bit of both in all of them. The idea that those maligning people are only on the social media is also not correct. I think traditional media journalists should give the people an option by playing in the social media space. They should become the online platforms where people can go to for truth, integrity and balanced news”.
Kadaria also predicted an era where increasing technologies such as the blockchain software rather than mere hearsay would facilitate the verification of fake news.
In his contribution, Editor-in-Chief of YNaija.com, Chude Jideonwo also urged journalists to not only anticipate but also adapt to the societal and institutional changes that accompanies the new age.
“A profession like ours where there are no barriers of entry transforms and evolve quickly in the society. So I think that the most important things for the journalist is to anticipate the change and adapt to what is called timeless truth because if that does not happen, we would become irrelevant and the lunatics would take over.”
Former Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the immediate past president, Dr Rueben Abati further emphasised that training and re-training of media practitioners is essential in ensuring integrity and balance news reporting in the age of the social media.
According to him, “there must be a lot of investment in terms of training and retraining of journalists. That is the only way that the traditional journalist can show professionalism and prove to be better, that he is a journalist and not just a blogger”.
“The social media has practically swallowed journalism as we used to know and has changed how news is communicated. We are now in the age of democratisation of information and many people who influence public opinion are not necessarily graduates of mass communication.
” One of the biggest challenges on news commoditization is that of truth and objectivity. We must ensure that the traditional ethics of journalism such as objectivity, impartiality, balance are upheld especially on the social media space,” he said.
Also speaking on the training of journalists, President of the Nigeria Guild of Editor, Funke Egbemode advised media practitioners to be fully committed to the profession through formal trainings.
“Are there citizen lawyers, doctors, or citizen supreme justices? You are either a journalist or you are not because it is the only way we can enforce integrity and our code of ethics.
” When we are talking about law, the legal profession, the noble profession, everybody knows what is expected of a lawyer and what is not expected of a lawyer. So if we are talking journalism we should be talking about journalists.
” And if you want to be a journalist, you need to get some training; you need to get into the business. You cannot play on the fringe; you are either on the inside or on the outside,” She noted.
