Former editor of The Nation on Sunday, Lekan Otufodurin, has said that more than ever before media practitioners have a bigger role to play in sustaining the hard earned democracy in the country even as he charged them to horn their skills for the new challenges in the industry.
He spoke his mind on Friday in Ibadan,the Oyo state capital while delivering the lecture titled”The roles of the media in Building a viable democracy and the digital media in the 21st century challenge”.
Otufodunrin contended that the emergence of the new media has made it imperative now more than ever before for practising journalists to brace up to acquire skills to present more informed stories and analysis that would help deepen their profession and separate it from the untrained ‘Citizen’ social media practitioners who are neither trained not follow the ethics of the media in their posting a to the public.
In order to live up to the challenge of sustaining democracy,he charged media men to charge elected public officers to live up to their job by subjecting their conduct and projects to deep public scrutiny.
“We have a role to play in ensuring that we have a country by holding public officers to perform and asking questions on what they do and what they failed to do”.
Recalling the experience of most of the award beneficiaries in bringing about democracy during the military days,he said holding public officers accountable through deep and incisive probe and report is the only way to sustain the struggles against dictatorship on which many practising and veteran journalists paid the price of detention and even death during the military rule.
According to him,” if the media must remain the voice of the voiceless,it must be discerning in its report and presentation and uphold the code of ethics and high degree of public trust and ethical standards with more incisive investigation through facts and data check “.
Otufodunrin,who heads the Media career centre(MCS),a mentoring and training outfit for media practitioners said to remain relevant in the changing world of media,practitioners must embrace new technology.
He also advocated for media to engage in advocacy to ensure all government agencies are properly funded while the media itself should endeavour to source funds to acquire adequate capacity to be able to source more money from outside to sustain their operations and remain relevant.
In her speech, Funke Egbemode,former managing editor of New Telegraph newspapers and Information commissioner for state of Osun, said the new media is a phenomenon in the industry as its operation is different in so many ways from the regular media due to lack of control and training by practitioners.
She contended that the new media as presently been operated cannot guarantee a future for media industry due to lack of ethics which is the foundation for sustaining the media adding that ” if new media is allowed to take charge of information dissemination,the industry and by extension the nation is in serious crisis adding that “citizen journalists which the new media is are information traffickers “.
She urged practitioners to turn their wealth of experience in the field to value so as to survive the harsh economic environment.
Other awardees include Dr Wasiu Olatunbosun,Oyo state information commissioner, former editor of Vanguard on Sunday,Mr Jide Ajani,chief press Secretary to Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo state,Taiwo Adisa and Ismail Omipidan,the chief press secretary to Osun state governor.
