By Olalere Fagbola
To have a balanced view on the analysis of the Press and a take home there-from for the Nigerian media ,it is good to read Professor Bolaji Akinyemi’s book on The coverage of the Nigerian civil war by the British Press.(THE GOD FATHER COMPLEX)
Fagbola
Amid his classification of the British Press along class and party ideological stratification,the learned author placed Telegraph as belonging to the CENTRE.; The Times as on the RIGHT WING ; The Guardian/Observer on the LEFT WING ; The Observer as being LIBERAL; The Morning Star as COMMUNIST while The Mirror is branded on the POPULAR ( Tabloid) .
It is true that many of the Nigerian politicians lack ideology but where do we classify the Nigerian media in terms of social and ideological stratification?
Like Priests, like congregations and the holy scriptures say :”My people love it so .” If truly people are mindful of utterances and those who are making the utterances, I wonder how many of our media men would have the courage to mount the pulpit and face the alert congregation . One of the reasons why media men (as social agents of communication that MAKE CRISIS PUBLIC) outlive the Executive is that while the executives boast of being crisis managers,the media outclass them by managing themselves THROUGH crisis. And one of the ways the media manage themselves through crisis is through their inbuilt capacity to subject themselves to inward reviews and criticism ,even as they constitute a level-playing platform for cross fertilization of ideas .Are we doing so today as agents of an owner ? If the truth must be told ,the savvy generation is not interested in whatever success we may claim to have recorded in the past but in our courage to admit our failures and do retribution. As reported by T.Elias in his book ,Press Law , the Minister , Anthony Enahoro in the first Republic was quoted as dissecting two ailments confronting the media ,namely lack of vision to recognize danger and the courage to oppose it . Most of us think of visionary people only as prophets or clerics in cassocks in spite of the fact that as journalists, we (by our training and practice ) are witnesses to and prophets of the socioeconomic, ethical and political Norms of the society and are well placed to project into the future correctly . I go with Walter De La Mare in his “All Hallows”:”We human beings are today merely living from hand to mouth; We learn today what we ought to have done yesterday and still at a loss to know what is to be done tomorrow. ”
Olalere Fagbola,a veteran journalist cum cleric
