Amidst the trending discussion on the rape allegation against Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA), Kingsely Obom-Egbulem asks in a Facebook post how safe newsrooms are for female journalists and interns.
It’s judgment day folks and this question has become pertinent since we have suddenly woken up to the need to reconcile with our past.
If the newsroom has been a part of your past, then we need to talk.
The workplace has never been a pleasant place for so many women.
If you work within the sexual abuse and gender violence field you’ll feel sorry for your daughter (if you have one) because chances are that before she gets to the top of her career, someone is likely going to grope her – touch or press her breast and buts, compliment her body, shape, legs, lips and congratulate her husband to be (assuming she’s not married) or embarrass her with imaginary tales or how her husband must be enjoying every night.
I spent most of my early working life in so many newsrooms. And I can tell you they are not very pleasant environments for young vulnerable ladies. God help you if you were an impressionable intern, seeing some of the men ( and of course women) you’ve been reading their articles and columns, seeing on TV or hearing their voices on radio and praying to meet one day.
These kids often get starstruck the moment they arrive in the newsrooms for their internship. And before you could say, Jack, they have been sampled by at least one ravenous Oga or an even more savage reporter.
I don’t know about your newsroom, but one thing I do know is that you would have at least one guy, notorious for “hacking” female journalists and interns. You only need to ask your friend who is a female journalist for her experience to understand the extent of this malady. Even in some cases, pregnant female journalists are not spared.
And many of these senseless barracudas are big boys today – occupying our state houses of Assembly, national assembly and others have moved on to other things and are even friends on social media with some of the ladies (the little girls) they sexually harassed or exploited.
One of my friends (a mother of 2 now) was sexually harassed and almost raped while she was an intern in one of our very respected newsrooms(that was fighting Abacha those days.) The first time she shared her experiences I wondered how someone could be fighting Abacha those days and still had time to hack young ladies working under him.
This might just be the advent of a period of reckoning with our past possibly about to catch up or reconcile with our present.
Just like it was prophesied judgement has started in the house of God. But I think it shouldn’t stop there. It needs to move to the next phase…and that next phase, if you ask me, should be the newsroom – the so-called 4th Estate of the realm.
It is hypocritical to feast and gloat over the sordid past of others when yours is even more repugnant.
Sisters, let’s not keep our placards yet. There just might be more demonstrations and protests in the weeks to come as the revelations drop in our WhatsApp and Dms and inboxes.
Interestingly, with every revelation let’s expect assorted albeit sophisticated denials.
