Tina Amanda
The International Press Center (IPC) has urged journalists in Rivers state to be professional and report electoral information devoid of sentiment, personal opinions, or emotions during the 2023 governorship and state assembly election.
The Executive Director of IPC, Lanre Arogundade, stated this during a stakeholders roundtable on the Media Monitoring Report on Trends in coverage of the 2023 Electoral process (January 2023 Report).
According to him, journalists should not allow emotions to override their judgement in election reportage.
He maintained that journalists are to present facts before the public for those in authority to learn appropriate lessons, noting that it would not be conflict sensitive to slam reports that may cause electoral violence or unrest in the society.
Arogundade, however, encouraged journalists to continue to play the role of making political parties do their jobs, by applying the principle of equity in their coverage, reportage of campaigns and other activities of parties and candidates contesting elections.
He said: “We recognize that as journalists we are also citizens many of us had our candidates on the February 25 presidential election and we still have our candidates come March 18 governorship election, because we are part of the electorate some of us are aggrieved.
“However, we happened to be professional journalists and we have the obligation to present facts before the public so those in authority can learn the appropriate lessons in order to have a peaceful society. If there is violence, it may consume every other person.
“To that extent what we are saying is, as journalists we need to ensure our biases, opinions do not influence in what we are reporting so we do not mislead the public. We are only the professional body the constitution gives the responsibility to monitor governance and hold government accountable.
“It’s a matter of our constitutional obligation, it’s also a matter of social responsibility more importantly it is a matter of the fact we are societal watch dog. We have to rise above our emotions to enable us present informations in a factual manner and people can rely on those informations to make a informed choices or decisions.
“If for example; you are aggrieved and you are reporting those who are calling for war you are promoting ethnic hatred before you know it there could be violence, because that is like an incitement, it can cause a lot of problem.
“Where you allow your emotions affect your professional judgement it can also affect your news medium. People belong to diverse side of politics, it does not mean everybody is aligned to one side, even though we can say some are majority and some minority.
“A media that wants to be credible must remove their emotions and present the facts. When you do that people would respect your news medium and they will want to come use it to express themselves”.
On her part, Executive Director Kebetcache, Emem Okon, speaking on her observation on the Media coverage IPC’s Monitoring activity report of the 2023 electoral process, emphasized the need for Media to pay more attention on inclusiveness by projecting those who can pay to be in the news and the under privileged, under represented and the marginalized group as they all have roles to play in the electoral process.
“To me it is some how, the report is one sided, a report that favours the privileged more than the disadvantage people. I think the media needs to create a balance. There is need to project the underprivileged, under marginalized group a lot of them have something to say or role they are playing in the electoral process.
“Most importantly it is also good to expose how these people have been marginalized or not included either at the level of their political parties, communities, local government or the entire political process. It helps to create that balance, it helps to show people where they are not doing well or where they doing well and areas to improve upon.”
Also speaking, the Chairman Nigeria Union of Journalist Rivers State Council, Stanley Job, said going by the IPC 2023 January Election report coverage, the Union will take correction by ensuring the underrepresented groups are well covered in the forthcoming governorship election in the state.
“The workshops is to refresh our memories and update us on what should be done in view of the last election, what should be done henceforth. Several issues where mentioned, the issue of not covering rural areas very well we are going to take corrections in the next election.
“The issue of women not given adequate publicity, the issue of the less privileged from what we have learnt there would be lot of improvement in the next election in the way we cover our bits. It is very important as a journalist we need to be trained and retrained to update oneself on what you are supposed to know”.
The NUJ Chairman however urged Journalist to guard against sentiment, personal interest as it is a tool that destroys the truth in reportin
