Seye Joseph @seyetweets
Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism has embarked on its House-To-House Training, – an advocacy engagement series to build and enhance investigative reporting desk in media houses.
The engagement that was first held at the Nation Newspaper brought together selected journalists in the organisation with Musikilu Mojeed of Premium Times and Prof. Lai Osho of Department of Mass Communication, Lagos State University as the facilitators.
Mojeed in his training that is titled “the making of an investigative journalist” emphasized the importance of investigative journalism desk in any media house as it helps to hold government officials accountable and not only to keep the people inform but to hold the people accountable and to unearth what the officials are hiding.
Parts of his argument are that investigative journalists must be passionate about the profession, have initiative, must be curious to things, be flexible in his approach, have ability to work with team and have good communication skills.
He mentioned further that if investigative journalism is well done, it will serve community better, journalist will be respected in the society and become a resource person.
Mojeed urged media houses to have investigative journalism desk to further enhance the value of the profession and called for continuous training and retraining of journalists and provide fund and support to run the desk.
According to him “Media organisations need to provide support for in-depth investigative reporting because it is expensive and risky. They need to provide everything that is needed and they must be allowed to work, they should not be expected to turn in stories everyday, perhaps weekly. They must be given all the support they need”
Speaking on Media Ethics Profession, Prof. Lai Osho of Media and Communication, Lagos State University School of Communication explained norms that are needed to run the profession effectively.
According to him investigative journalists must conduct himself with virtuous character, have moral principles and have reasons to question how to act.
The don expatiated further that attaining the truth should be the ultimate set of every investigative journalists. He mentioned accuracy, fairness, balance, comprehensiveness and objectivity are the major tools that can be used to attain the truth.
Other tools he mentioned were context, community cohesion, diversity, dignity and civility.
He urged investigative journalists to show high ethical standard in their work to promote high standard of the profession, for quality control and to protect the profession group.
The Coordinator of the Centre, Motunrayo Alaka said that the intention of the Pro engage House To House is to go from one media house to another to know if they have investigative journalism desk.
“If they have one, we want to help them to see how they can make it better and if they don’t have, we want to help to see how they can create one. With this, we go to the media house, we do investigative journalism training or we do short training and orientation on investigative journalism and at the end of the week, After this, those that the media houses intend to use for the desk will come to our office for a full day workshop on how to run an investigative journalism desk”, she said.
Alaka said the initiative will be at Leadership Newspaper, Guardian Newspaper, Telegraph, Daily Trust, Premium Times, TVC before it ends on January 30th.
