Wanted: A Journalism of decorum

It beggars belief the rationale behind the mad quest to buy the manifest from  Dana Air just moments after the tragedy. It is horrendous to join the race to publish that manifest at a time when friends, relatives and co-workers were still living on a faint hope that those they know are not affected. It is cruel to read the death of a friend, family member or colleague on Facebook or in the mushrooming internet news services. It is like putting the knife into the throat of a profession so revered. If we do not return to the old time journalism, we may be descending to the abyss of irrelevance.

Human life is sanctimonious. Nobody should revel at it being wasted. Plane tragedies call for the strictest adherence to rules of coverage – something akin to the Rotary principle – Is it for the common good of all? Is it the truth? Would it hurt majority of people? Can it cause panic? Can it tear the nation? Can it stoke violence? These questions ought to agitate the minds of any editor or writer worth his title. It is a shame to adopt the ‘catch me if you can’ attitude to the reportage of any disaster or issues of national security. There is no place except Nigeria, where there is this morbid eagerness to carry the manifest while relatives of victims are yet to be told and comforted.

The leadership of the NUJ working with other affiliate unions have a great task in reforming the pen profession. Standards are simply no longer there and most of those who practice today either do not know the codes or are happy to break it without fear of sanction. That would have been a professional problem if not that in their breach of the rules, they are also leading us as a people, a nation into the abyss.

Even in reporting stories, we should not forget the legal principle of audi altera partem – hear the other side. Yes, it is a legal one, but most times, somebody’s hard-earned reputation depends on it. In the developed world, it is no longer just enough to say efforts to get his own side failed, you must show to your editor that you indeed made that effort. The evidence must be such that your lawyer can use as a defense in a court of law – that is the norm. A misuse of a word; a phrase; a sentence or an entire story can do incalculable damage to the reputation of an individual; divide a country; cause inter-ethnic or religious strife or permanently soil the image of a country. Ours is a volatile and diverse society standing on the edge. Our coverage of events must be borne with deep reflections on the impact of our stories on individual sanity and national cohesion, moreso now than at any other time.

The quest to be the first to publish without facts led to an erroneous story of the passage of a popular matriach in western Nigeria. Imagine the pain of a pilot on the Dana fleet who read not just his own obituary in stories but had his picture to compliment an unverified story. He is alive, well and not on the plane. Another family had to issue a rejoinder that its siblings are not on the plane based on erroneous publications. All these could have been avoided if an editor had done his job of verifying his story before rushing to press. Yes, we all want to beat deadlines but truth should not be sacrificed for that quest.

Over the weekend, General Muhammadu Buhari learnt to say he agreed with the position of his visitor when some journalists who speak a smattering of Hausa misinterpreted and attributed the misinterpretation of a proverb to suit their portrayal of him as a violent person. Babangida had to do the same. These are veritable sources of news for people, but now, we would have to hear them through so-called close friends because they cannot trust us to quote them properly.

I have asked myself what we stand to gain by exposing the identities of people who have offered to mediate on the Boko Haram crisis? Are we in cahoots with those who benefit from the carnage or are we setting them up for elimination? What is the need to know those who have offered their olive branch to a group known for mindless violence? What do we stand to achieve by exposing a backdoor negotiation that could bring us virtual peace? When we publish speculative stories like that, what are we doing? Helping to quell the crisis or simply playing into the hands of elements bent on dividing the country.

It is not just unverifiable stories that impugn the reputation of journalism today; it is also the mindless use of horrendous pictures? I used to subscribe to a weekly years back, my son was just three. He picked up the paper while I was driving him from kindergarten and saw the bloody, decapitated heads of people in the magazine and it took me weeks to bring him back to sanity. That is a personal reflection of what the negation of ethics can have on little children and people of squeamish dispositions.

Our country did no justice to the corpses of victims by piling them up, like roasted goats in open trucks. We demean not just the dead that way, but ourselves. Society had to fight and win the indecent use to which we put female bodies as Page 3 Girls, but the vice is creeping back in. Society is reversing back to mindless nudity and the consequences are evident – decadence, rape and sexual attacks. We must learn to put on the goggles of censorship of sensitive issues and wear the goggles of decency in covering accidents and mindless bloodshed. That is what the ethics of our profession demand. We should not arm the enemies of our profession with the necessary arsenal to inflict the kind of censorship that would make it impossible for us to operate with freedom and fairnesss.