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The Bellview Plane Crash, the Ban on AIT and Media Anger - Putting Things in Perspective By Julius Joel
Journalists are essentially very important people in any community. They provide valuable information to people and are in many ways the image makers of the society they come from. Foreign journalists rely very much on indigenous ones to help interpret and make meaning of events and actions of people of a particular country or location. With their own indigenous eyes, or perspectives, and their background in the cultures and general way of life of their people, they can provide very valuable insights into the ways people do what they do. Take for instance, the British police – five of them were in pursuit of a suspect, they caught him, pinned him down and released eight shots/bullets on him. The British journalists claimed that the police were under pressure and the world accepted the explanation. This also points to the protection British and American journalists give to their law enforcement agents. What happens daily in Iraq is an example, if Bush were an African, the UN world court would have ben trying him by now for crime against humanity. And in Europe and America foreign journalists don’t just operate any how without assistance of their local counterparts. In fact they cannot operate without the local counterparts.
In many sub-Saharan African countries,
foreign journalists usually just simply abuse the unsuspecting local
people because of ignorance. It is possible for CNN and BBC to broadcast
the shattered pieces of the crashed Bellview plane because of
irresponsible actions of local journalists like those of the AIT. The
excuse they would give is that they got the pictures from the local
journalists. The train bombing in London, I wonder how many Nigerian
journalists, or any journalist foreign to United Kingdom was given
opportunity to photograph the incidents? Most often our Nigerian
journalists at times lead foreign journalists to commit all such
atrocities. For two weeks the bombed track of the underground railway in
London was sealed up and when it was finally cleared more dead bodies
were discovered. No newspaper blamed Tony Blair f or delaying or why he
did not abandon his state duties to go and clear the railway track. A
737 plane which crashed earlier this year on the mountains of
Afghanistan took not less than two weeks to retrieve. More than three
times last year explosions took place in at various South African
refineries, no journalist was allowed there for reasons of intellectual
property, and not less than five light aircraft crashes have occurred in
the past two months which are never carried in the international media.
Two reports in BBC-World television on
Nigeria came out in July. These reports were never beamed to Africa,
especially West Africa, or Nigeria. One was to campaign against
appointment of a black Pope. A BBC correspondent went around the
Ajegunle area to secretly film locations – small private clinics where
it was claimed that AIDS patients are being treated and the report went
further to claim that 22 million Nigerians are infected with HIV and
that if a Pope should come from Africa he might have to be preoccupied
with the problem of AIDS. The report also showed some parts of Onitsha
and showed pictures of old and hungry looking couples who they claimed
were Arinze’s idol worshiping parents. The journalists had all the time
in the world looking specifically for only the bad things.
The second report was based on a research
report by a university professor from England who claimed that private
schools are better than public schools in academic performances. The
study was to be on Nigeria and India, but Indian report was never given
on the television programme. Again the remote corners of Ajegunle was
the locations of the research for both private and public schools and as
typical of Nigerian society. The private school selected was an
unregistered private school, which cannot be accessed by motor vehicles.
There was no classroom facilities and viewers were only shown the front
of the school where the school owner who also doubled as the headmaster
was seen taking the pupils on physical exercise in the open moody space
which hardly could accommodate two cars. The public school in Lagos was
photographed when it was raining thus creating messy and unattractive
scene. The interesting thing was that the private school owner took
advantage of a white man and a university professor from Britain to get
parents to believe that his unregistered school has recognition of the
British government despite the lack of facilities. Again it is easy to
see the deception by both the school owner and the British researcher
who threw to the winds all ethical considerations when conducting a
research on human beings, and did not ask for or obtain the consent of
the people for the release of his results to the media. The role of our
local journalists in saving us from such abuses should be clearly
evident.
There were two editorial opinions on the
ban placed on AIT and its affiliate radio – Raypower, for being so
unprofessional in the broadcast of the crashed Bellview plane. The
editorial opinions were to say the least very distasteful. Distasteful
because they demonstrated unqualified ignorance about ethics of
broadcasting and in particular when it comes to according dignity to
humans whose lives are lost tragically and the feelings of the relatives
of the dead. AIT to say the least has been very callous by the
broadcast. Traditionally there is no tribe in Nigeria where the news of
sudden death is broken without feeling as was done by the AIT broadcast.
No where in the developed world do they broadcast dead bodies of human
beings, even some animals. One editorial claimed that graphic images of
victims of hurricane Katrina were shown all over the world? The question
is of which human beings – the whites or the blacks? Definitely a white
journalist would not bother to show dead bodies of black people because
he/she like most other white Western journalists don’t believe black
people are humans. Then there is the belief by white people that
suffering is characteristic of blacks. No white was shown to be
suffering that seriously in New Orlean, but the blacks who constitute
about less than 30% of the population of the city were the ones said to
be affected. Talk of wars, diseases and all forms of sufferings – these
are peculiar characteristics of the blacks, not whites, and the British
don’t waste time to inform their children about this in their schools.
Even after the so-called destruction of IRA weapons after 30 years of
war with British government, there still continues to be demonstrations
and burning of cars and buildings in Northern Ireland. These are not
shown, they are simpl y reported. The recent three weeks of unrest in
France, saw the Western press reporting that the Africans were the ones
demonstrating even though white youths were also among the
demonstrators. Those editors of the Nigerian newspapers who were irked
by the ban on AIT should tell us whether they saw any dead bodies of the
Russian children killed in the raid by the Checyian rebels. How many
dead bodies of the more than 50 killed in the London bombs were
broadcasted for their relatives to behold?. It is easy for Western
journalists to come to Africa take and broadcast pictures of people
suffering through wars, hungers and diseases. These are African problems
and since they are less than human beings they do not deserve the
dignity you give to human beings and so Western televisions can carry
pictures of them in their sufferings and indignity. The West is even
more concerned about the death of animals in Africa than those of human
beings. When has America come to the aid of an African country in war?
After the second world war more than fifty years ago Germany and Japan
were never neglected, up till today large American army presence are in
these countries including those of Asia. With American army also goes
the presence of American businesses. Why then do we wonder how the rest
of the world develop and left Africa behind? It is where you have the
presence of some few whites that are allowed to develop – places like
South Africa, Zimbabwe, where they made the mistake of not wiping out
the indigenous people like they did in America an d Australia. And
wherever there is black people why are they backward? Simple they are
not supposed to be humans, but sub-humans and therefore they are not
allowed to develop. One offence Somalia committed against America is
the dragging of the dead bodies of American soldiers across the street.
For that offence Somalia has been left to rut. Haiti the first Black
country to liberate itself, remains backward today just for the simple
reason that it is a black people’s country which dared to defeat a
Western country – France – 200 years ago. Such humiliation cannot be
allowed without a reprisal. They must be subjected to eternal
humiliation and America has since been making sure that the country has
no stable government. More than three hundred years after the black man
got to the Americas they still remain minority and the poorest.
I think it is barbaric of AIT to broadcast
human body parts. Sudden death as happened in a plane crash – such
misfortune is nothing to joke about. The argument that AIT did it to
expose the lapses in Nigeria’s response to emergency is an argument that
is flawed for so many reasons, not least the fact that as citizens of
Nigeria members of the AIT crew should not only have human feelings but
should also be la w abiding. The law expects them to report any accident
to authority and broadcasting cannot be taken as report but reckless and
very irresponsible disobedience of the law of the country. The second
argument is whether we can equate AIT crew filming human parts as people
with feelings, people with milk of human emotions flowing through their
veins and people who consider themselves as human beings worthy of
dignity. Sometimes one wonders what goes in the minds of a Nigerian
newspaper men and women when they published the remains of humans burnt
in a tragic violence at Ipaja and even put it on the internet. Is it to
confirm to the world that these are not people but animals? Six million
Jews were gased to death, I wonder how many of their skulls are on
display today as is the case with what we have in Rwanda where there is
a museum of skulls. The Rwandan people are Africa ns and are not suppose
to be humans in the eyes of the West and therefore their dead bodies and
bones can be put on display. And this is how the West sees Africa and
want Africans to see themselves and AIT was just doing exactly that!!
I think there is need for some sensibility
and sensitivity in reporting and Nigerian journalists should adopt the
attitude of their Western counterparts building their countries rather
than tearing them down. Every Nigerian should have assumed
responsibility for the rescue and if at all there should have been a
survivor of that plane crash, it does not matter who does the rescuing.
The mistake the Nigerian journalists make is that the rescuing is
government’s responsibility alone. It does not matter who finds the
crashed plane, many times technology fails. Human lives are so valuable
and it does not matter, even the baby in the womb of a passenger in that
plane is as important to Nigeria as any other Nigerians and the concern
of AIT journalists should be about the value of human lives. If the AIT
people really had human feelings and had respect for human dignity
reaching out for the camera to broadcast should not have been the first
priority of their mission to the crashed plane, rather it should be how
to get help for the crashed victims and their relations. If AIT has not
apologize to Nigerians by now I think they should do it as a matter of
urgency and feel really sorry for their less than dignified manner of
broadcasting. The same also goes to Punch newspaper for publishing the
gory picture of burnt human remains of the Ipaja violence in its paper
and on the internet on that Saturday of the Bellview plane crash.
It is interesting that up till now no
Nigerian newspapers has published any story of the lawlessness of the
operators of the airlines in Nigeria. More than two years ago government
banned planes that are more than twenty years old. Many people whose
names were not on the tickets traveled in the Bellview plane with
somebody else’s tickets, even after the plane crash there are still the
disobedience of air traffic instructions. The question still remaining
to be answered is was that Bellview plane fitted with the data or the
black box? How much concern for human lives were the owners of Bellview
and can they tell the world what efforts th ey make at making their
planes safe to travel? Or like the AIT, is it only commercial interests
which should be priority and not human lives? And is it only government
which should be responsible for everything in Nigeria, there are no
individual responsibilities? Then if this is so, we can expect more
crashes and AIT can be expected to continue on the path of
irresponsibility and disrespect for human feelings and human dignity.
Julius Joel
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