JOURNALISM, BLOGGING AND THE MIDDLE GROUND!

Based on Pew Research’s 9 Principles of Journalism, I decided to match up their principles (which you can read here) to what can be described as Blogging’s counter-principle. Listed below you’ll find their principles, followed by that of blogging’s, then followed by what I call the Middle Ground, where both somewhat co-exist. Note that some of what is written here is said in jest, but you know what they say about truth…

1.)  Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.

Blogging is about your opinion and no one in their right mind should give a hoot what you think! Your truth is often… your truth!

The Middle Ground: Sometimes journalists have to get schooled by bloggers about what is fact, although I won’t mention names, it tends to happen when someone (working for a respected professional outlet) comes to town and gets all the facts wrong or muddled up and then a blogger has to step in to counter with the truth!

2.)  Journalism’s first loyalty is to citizens.

Blogging’s first loyalty is to your ego.

The Middle Ground: Some of today’s highly respected news outlets pander to a certain opinion or parties, e.g. FOX News seeming loyalty to Republicans, NTA to the government of the day, e.t.c

3.)  Journalism’s essence is a discipline of verification.

Blogging needs no verification; it’s a jungle out there. Remember the saying, “monkeys with keyboards”.

The Middle Ground: Sometimes, journalists do rush to print stories without proper verification. TV news corporations have fallen victim to this many a times in a bid to be “first” with the news. Perhaps nowhere is this more common than on American news TV.

4.)  Journalism’s practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.

Some bloggers run for cover when they meet some of the people they talk about, like if I saw Drake and his entourage, I might walk the other way! Matter of fact, if I saw him alone, I might walk the other way!

The Middle Ground: This rule does not apply to the advert departments of most Nigerian newspapers, who in more ways than one are dependent on the advert money of a large number of personalities that they do cover, whom happen to be state/government officials and their lackeys wishing governor/president so-and-so happy birthday or something to that tune. Now, this in by no way means they pander to the opinions of these individuals or take bribes from them, but the fact is ad departments in Nigeria know where a large chunk of their money comes from; a large sum of that ad money comes from government sources.

5.)  Journalism must serves as an independent monitor of power, something like INEC, but that actually works.

Blogging is like a classroom without a monitor, where some have power to an extent like Linda Ikeji or Omojuwa, etc. Everybody else needs to find a “normal” job just to keep some form of power running in their house.

The Middle Ground: Does this apply to Rupert Murdoch?!

6.)  Journalism must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.

Blogging is all criticism (like how I hate your album) and NO compromise.

The Middle Ground: Here’s another place where blogging takes a provided advantage from journalism, if one newspaper refuses to publish your opinion, go to another… or start a blog.

7.)  Journalism must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.

Blogging has succeeded doing that… with 140 characters and it’s interesting. People go to war over tweets now.

The Middle Ground: Let’s face it, as far as Nigerian newspapers go, they really only remain “interesting” and relevant because at best only 10% of the population are online and know better than to buy a Nigerian newspaper full of congratulatory messages to Governor What’s His Face and bland stories.

8.)  Journalism must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.

Blogging: Ever heard of Twitter… where they keep the news proportional to a 140 characters?

The Middle Ground: I have no clue!

9.)  Journalism: Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

Blogging: Isn’t that what blogging is for? Graffiti for writers, remember?!

The Middle Ground: Hey, we agree here, except while journalism requires a personal sense of ethics and responsibility, blogging doesn’t require much of a moral compass.

And there you have it folks!

THAT "UNFINISHED" REPORT ON ABUJA

A reporter recently wrote a piece on the BBC website, as well as, I believe on the radio show Focus On Africa about the nation’s capital Abuja. The report can be found here. Certain things caught my attention about it that I found quiet disturbing and rather unbecoming of whatever journalistic expertise the reporter, Alex Preston has. The article titled, “Abuja: Nigeria’s Unfinished Capital Built On “Stolen” Land” raises some questions of his intent and more importantly who he may have been talking to in regard to his report.

          

First, let me state I DO NOT work for the government, so this is not a propaganda response where facts may be hidden. I mean I quite agree with some of what he wrote. Abuja can be charmless and yes it has buildings (depending mostly on the area where one lives) that are left uncompleted, but in presenting this image of the city, he seemed to multiply its “charmlessness”.

          

For starters, the picture used on the website is over 3 years old, if not more. Here's the picture used in Preston's report:

The building in the background is the Silverbird Galleria and has been completed for over two years now. The huts you see in the foreground aren’t of a village, they’re actually shops of the Arts & Crafts Center where goods from traditional fabrics to jewelry are sold and are purposely made to look like that to go in line with the theme of the center. The placing of that old picture with the story of Abuja’s lack of charm and uncompleted buildings makes it look like we started building the city a year or two ago. Here's what the Silverbird Galleria looks like now:

           

If that's not enough, just to further drive the point home, here's a picture of the galleria from the Arts & Crafts Center as it is today:

 

And not like this:

Abuja constantly has to build to accommodate an ever-increasing population, despite the fact that rent is undeniably high, still as we say, “Nobody moves out of Abuja, they only move in”, perhaps not like Lagos, but still. There’s no denying that in the process of expanding the city, certain infrastructures would be left behind, but if Preston had an issue with this he could’ve talked to the F.C.T (Federal Capital Territory) board in charge of the city. Besides, some of those uncompleted buildings belong to private individuals and until the city decides to put a law in place that they must be completed, they will stay part of the landscape, whether they’re charmless or not!

           

Another issue is his mix-up of Abuja’s history, where he claims former President Olusegun Obasanjo “seized” the land when he was a military president. The truth, which perhaps no one told Preston, is that the plan to relocate the nation’s capital from Lagos to Abuja was made by Obasanjo’s predecessor, General Murtala Mohammed who was assassinated before the plans came to fruition. General Obasanjo simply carried out what had already been set in motion and agreed upon, there was no "seizing" by the general! The issue of whether the Gwaris were adequately compensated or not goes on till date and I do not have all the information on that issue.

          

Still with his lack of research, Preston writes, “Abuja is itself a Gwari word”. NO IT ISN’T! It is actually an amalgamation of two words from two different languages. Abuja is named after a prince, Abu being short for the Arabic name Abubakar and “ja”, a Hausa word for “red” or in his case “light-skinned”. Hence, the fair-skinned prince Abubakar became Abu Ja. His brother Suleiman, has a city named after him called Suleja, in the neighbouring Niger State.

          
It would be respectful of the BBC to withdraw Preston’s article from their site or have it edited to reflect more of the truth on ground, if indeed the BBC wishes to uphold its stand on fair and balanced reporting and to Preston, maybe you should stay a week and not just 3 days, the city might grow on you… or not! We do have some charm!

OUR COLLECTIVE HISTORY: RAMBLINGS!

This is our collective history as far back as when we think it all went wrong: The soldiers who stole the throne from the first independent civil administrators brought in a new type of respect called fear. Whereas the civilian administrators were admired largely for their great intellect and perceived patriotism, the soldiers brought in their “might is right” mentality to the Nigerian conscience, proving this theory as they took turns to replace each other based on that principle. Most of these soldiers were smart individuals, but due to the physical and sometimes harsh nature of their job, they became seen as brutes before anything else, feared across the land, from North to South and from East to West. And in what must be regarded as one of our nation’s greatest ironies, they who stole the mandate became the glue that held this nation for so long till they handed power to a different uniform. It was during their days that most of the tales of this nation’s woes can be traced. Everyone living in this country can trace one life changing period in their lives to that era directly or indirectly.

We the neo-colonial slaves are stuck between our parents’ insistence to hold on to the past be it through some relative in a remote village they themselves refuse to live in or through their ongoing autonomy in our politics/personal lives and between our generation’s need to move “forward” through some social awakening be it on twitter or facebook or gasp, instagram; the perceived alien orientation our elders claim we stick to.

For this reason, our thinking differs and a battle between tradition and modernity rages. The battle between religion and culture rages, which people often mix and think are the same. The media has become the new battlefield upon which some of these battles take place. No longer do we tune in to the 9 o’clock news on NTA, when we can go on debating the polity on twitter till it is a trending topic and we are still talking about it the next day like we were all in the same room when it happened. The playing field has changed. Not only have we changed families, we have changed the game!

THE NON-WELFARE STATE OF NIGERIA

Picture taken from www.nigeriaembassyusa.org

In a country rife with tales of stolen and unpaid pensions, not to mention the state’s general inability to take care of the welfare of the average citizen (and this is not to discredit previous efforts by past government, whose biggest crime in this matter has been an apparent lack of sincerity), it’s hard to determine if Nigeria can actually provide for its elderly, unemployed and orphaned. We’ve all seen the lines of pensioners queuing up to get their pensions, sleeping on the floor, because they came from far away and couldn’t afford to pay for a hotel room in whatever major city they were called upon to receive their gratuity.

The fact is Nigeria has never set in place an at least adequate system to take care of its people. Not to mention the fear of the number of people who might take advantage of such a system, if it were even put in place. On the issue of pensions, one of the reasons why so many people are eager to work as “drones” (forgive me for using such a term) for the Civil Service is to obtain one. You hear the story often told to people reluctant to work for the Civil Service, they tell you to serve out a certain number of years and you become entitled to a pension (if that doesn’t make you a drone, I don’t know what qualifies). It’s one thing if you love the job or just happened to be opportune to be offered one, but to get into it just for the pension and a “secure future”, while understandable due to the “Nigerian situation”, explains why there’s so much complain about the Service. Other ways of getting a government pension includes working for other branches of the government, again for a certain number of years as well (military, police, e.t.c).

Private firms now offer people a pension plan taken from their salaries by taking away a certain percentage of your money and keeping it for you, sort of like saving for a rainy day and allowing you to access it whenever you want. So what happens to those deemed “uneducated” and don’t work a big job in the city, the farmers in the villages, the non-government workers and those who have no idea what a pension is? Who cares for them in old age? God forbid the farmer has no children, who takes care of the farm? Understandably and perhaps apologetically to the government, they can’t save everyone! But they can help the majority by taking care of the two ends of the welfare spectrum; that is the very young (infants) and the very old. Once that is done, the Middle Majority (those unemployed and often stereotyped unruly youths that turn “thug” when elections come, lol) can be dealt with, with less stress and in more innovative ways.

If the medical bills of the elderly from a chosen age are halved (with the other half perhaps paid by the state or just forgotten altogether) and parents don’t have to worry about paying maternity bills or paying less, it goes a long way in setting the foundation for a welfare state. These of course are just suggestions that are easier said on paper, but in reality harder to practice, when you consider the state of our Health industry and their dependent survival on funds.

So how do you come up with a system that makes sure whether you work for the government or not, that you will be taken care of in some way when you reach old age (whether financially or medically) and that when you have children at their initial stage they’re not a financial burden? I believe we have the money to create a half decent welfare system, otherwise they wouldn’t be anything to “misappropriate” from the government from time to time. It’s all about sincerity, I think and it seems to be what’s lacking.

FROM AL-MUSTAPHA TO ZIMMERMAN: A CASE AGAINST OUR SENTIMENTS

Before I put anyone on blast, which is by no means my intention here, I feel the need to share with you a little story of recent events. When the Egyptian military ousted Morsi, I was happy. I wasn’t happy because I understood why he was ousted or why some Egyptians wanted him out. I was happy because I admired the Egyptians’ gusto and not to mention I have Egyptian friends who were extremely happy. What’s happier than seeing your friends happy, right? But I was blind and that’s not to say some of these people didn’t have reasons to dislike Morsi’s administration, but I was blind to the fact that what happened in Egypt was an outright coup. I suppose I lied to myself that it was alright, since the people were happy. It turns out it was only half the people that were happy, unlike the popular ousting of Mubarak, where very few people wanted him around and looking at the recent happenings in Egypt’s politics, I wonder if this wasn’t a bigger grand scheme that no one might end up liking in the end, which brings me to the cases of Al-Mustapha and George Zimmerman and to the point of being objective, rather than sentimental as I clearly was!

           

Charity starts at home, so I’ll start with the acquittal of Major Hamza Al-Mustapha. So unless you’ve been living under a rock or know nothing about Nigeria, Al-Mustapha, the man charged with the murder of Kudirat Abiola (the wife of late politician M.K.O Abiola) has been freed after what is it, 14/15 years? For the record, Al-Mustapha DID NOT pull the trigger. No, that was Sgt. Rogers who has since been freed and who claimed he believed he was acting in the good of the nation which he served as a soldier. Al-Mustapha was the man who ordered the hit. Since his then oga at the top, Abacha has been no more for over a decade now, Al-Mustapha is the one on trial and some may say rightfully so.

           

Al-Mustapha’s release has caused mixed reactions, some justifiable, some outright sentimental. To make it clear, let me state where I stand. Al-Mustapha is NO HERO, however just like his admirable personality won over the people who initially attended the Oputa panel to jeer and ridicule him, the length of his trial for the good part of over a decade has gained him lots of sympathy. The case for justice against Al-Mustapha became one of injustice and now most of us are just glad it’s over, whether or not we like the man. Some may celebrate him as a Northern hero, but there’s nothing heroic in my view of his actions or of him being from the North. Some may say justice was denied, but holding him on trial for so long became an injustice of its own and in the end he won. I won’t get into the theories of the timing of his release, because that would be another headache. Al-Mustapha will still be an enigmatic and admirable figure who will be equally loved and loathed in equal measure for the rest of his life; that is something he will live with. His release won’t bring back Kudirat, but alas it is over. No more wondering what will become of him. He is free and so is our collective anxiety, let us move on.

         

Let us move on to a case we have somehow made our own in a country where for the past few years people have been dropping like flies, while we wish to do nothing more than turn our heads in the opposite direction and carry other people’s cases. We turn to the case of one Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old Florida teenage shot dead by a supposed neighbourhood vigilante named George Zimmerman in the good old U.S of A, which seems to have a legal system some of us are now realizing isn’t as great as we might have made it out to be, but we won’t be sentimental here.

Whether or not Zimmerman was acting on the basis of a neighbourhood watch is very much beside the point now. Years ago, the TV drama, Boston Legal aired an episode that had an eerie prediction of the Trayvon Martin case, a black man was arrested for walking into a gated community. The police officer who arrested him did so because he thought he was a perpetrator. His reason? The Black man didn’t look like anybody from the neighbourhood. Alan Shore defended the Black man, rightfully citing race as an injustice towards his client and won largely based on that, claiming there was nothing wrong with a Black man walking into a gated community and one day wishing to be able to live in one of the fancy houses.

           

The Zimmerman case with its almost similar circumstances is very different. Very, very different. For starters, one of the people involved is dead. Trayvon is not here to speak for himself. Second of all, Zimmerman is not a police officer to even have the law on his side based on his occupation. Third and most important of all, there were no eye witnesses and even the people who made phone calls to 911 during the altercation can’t give concrete evidence as to what really happened. Is it sad that Trayvon got shot? Absolutely! I wouldn’t wish this on any parent. Was the court wrong in acquitting Zimmerman? To be honest, NO! In a proper trial and I do believe Zimmerman got as fair a trial as he could, but in a proper proper trial Zimmerman would at least have been charged with manslaughter and NOT murder (as some people are calling for). But the trial from all indication was as fair as it could be and let’s remember we are talking about the Florida legal system that not only allows people to carry guns as does pretty much the rest of the United States, but allows people to act in the form of vigilantes, which Zimmerman claims he was doing. We don’t know what really happened between Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman, like I said one party is dead and that leaves us to go with the word of the other.

           

Now some people might say I’m harsh and say if Trayvon was White it would be different. Yes, it would. For starters, race may not be brought up had he been White but he wasn’t, he was Black and not only did race become an issue, it seemed some of us MADE IT the only issue! If Trayvon was White, the outcome may have been different, but who’s to say Zimmerman still would not have cocked his gun at him. To further explain my point, I give you the words of Brian Tannenbaum, a criminal and Bar Defense lawyer in Miami, Florida who’s been practicing since 1995 and we can all agree has a better understanding of the system there than those of us crying foul here in Nigeria on twitter and elsewhere. Note the emphasis is all mine:

          

“I think it’s terrible that George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. That’s a TRADEGY. I don’t think he had to shoot him, and had one or two things been different (he didn’t get out his car, didn’t have a gun, on and on), we wouldn’t be here. I keep hearing Trayvon Martin would have killed George Zimmerman, I don’t think so, but I WASN’T THERE. YOU WEREN’T THERE EITHER! You don’t know what happened exactly. As much as you want to believe you were there and know what happened, exactly, you weren’t, and you don’t. Not knowing exactly what happened requires a NOT GUILTY verdict, no matter how angry or outraged you are.”

           

He further points out, “The jury didn’t free Zimmerman because they thought he was a good guy or because they weren’t sad that a young boy was killed (jurors were rumored to be crying during the state’s rebuttal), they found him not guilty because the facts and the law required them to do so.” Shekinan!

           

If you should be angry at anyone, be angry at the State and or the federal system that allows people to carry guns and play superheroes when they think they’re in the right before we descend on Zimmerman. Another point Tannenbaum makes, “Juries don’t make decisions because they are mad, sad, angry, or feel bad for someone’s parents… You don’t think it’s right that he (Zimmerman) killed Trayvon Martin, but that’s not what the law says in Florida where we like guns more than we like people. You have a problem with that, do something to change the law…”

You couldn’t shoot a teenager in Nigeria for walking into your neighbourhood just like that, because our system doesn’t allow any Tom, Dick and Harry to own a gun. You’d have to be a man of uniform to even own one in the first place. Zimmerman got acquitted because his is a land where he was right to have a hand gun and was right to, in his words act in self defense. There’s nothing we can do about that either… except again, change the law! I rest my case!