Journalist and poet, Simbo Olorunfemi writes that the media has carried on as if above the law and has to learn to take responsibility
Every time a media organ or practitioner is queried on the basis of the law, what we have come to see is for those who lay claim to the protection of rights to raise hell, irrespective of the facts of the matter. The ready accusation is always that of political persecution or interference. They hastily pollute the water, hardly do they ever allow for a dispassionate interrogation of the facts.
One might be mistaken into thinking that the media is actually above the law. One might run away with the assumption that with the constitutional recognition of the role of the media, it is placed above the law and cannot be made to answer to the law. Because this has gone on for so long, it would appear that some of the operators have carried on with this misguided assumption, resorting to crying wolf, once called to order, employing the pulpit to bully anyone who queries it, regulators inclusive, to submission.
…There is a reason why licencing regime exists. There are conditions attached to obtaining a licence and there are terms to be met for renewing it. Such practice is universal. The whole essence of the regime is to ensure that the licensee does not carry on in breach of the law and the code, but it also gives rights and opportunities for redress which the licensee can activate, at will.
Licences regulate Banking, Oil, Telecommunications and other sectors. We can see how regulators operate in those sectors and how they have to wield the big stick, even revoking licences when the situation calls for it.
The Broadcast licence is one held in trust, in particular. It is a privilege, not a right. It is one held by a licensee with an understanding and sign-on to not using the medium to instigate hate, cause division, and in the case of the NBC Code, partisanship, along with a long list of infractions constitute a serious breach of the Code.
Every Broadcast organisation in Nigeria knows or should know, what the law and the NBC Code requires of it. But because many of the Broadcasting organisations have carried on, in serial breach of the Code, they might have come to assume they can get away with anything, while NBC snores.
Perhaps NBC is overstretched and unable to monitor as it should, for what goes on, in the name of Broadcasting, especially on Radio, is such that could easily set the country on fire if it has not already laid grounds for it.
In my years in Broadcasting, I was never a fan of ‘phone-ins’. Where you have prepared yourself, having so much to say, opening the airwaves up to all sorts of callers can be rather distracting.
But that has become the norm now. It is now the default setting. Broadcasters just open up space to all sorts – in the name of Guests, expert opinion and calls from all sorts of people. Whereas the Broadcaster ought to educate, the platform now becomes one for misinformation, propagation of falsehood, rabid partisanship, promotion of hate and accentuation of all our fault lines.
NBC is late to the party. So much harm has been done already, with the social media feeding the traditional media in a dangerous, cyclical manner, lies reinforcing falsehood.
The Media has carried on as if above the law. It is not. It cannot. It has to learn to take responsibility. We hear that the Broadcast organisation in the eye of the storm, in spite of several warnings and queries from the regulator, rather than make amends, chose to play from its worn-out script of live broadcast to the world, to whip up sentiment and possibly intimidate the regulator.
Good thing, the NBC is not above the law. If the operator believes that the regulator has acted in breach of the law and/or the code, it can approach the Court. That is how it should be. None should carry on as if above the law.
*07062019