|
The Media and the Fourth Republic: The Watchdog that Dozed On Its Watch By Mohammed Haruna
Being text of speech on THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN CONSOLIDATING DEMOCRATIC RULE IN NIGERIA delivered by MOHAMMED HARUNA on Saturday, February 24, 2007 during the 2007 Annual Week of the Northern States Chapter of the Political Science Students Association of Nigeria, at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, the role of the media in any society is well-known. It is to inform, educate and entertain. It is assumed that the main objective of this role is to bring progress to society. Subsumed in this broad objective is the need for peace, harmony and security in society, for without at least these three, no society can make progress.
The media’s role of informing, educating and entertaining the public takes different forms in different societies. This role is largely determined by the nature of the social and political forces in society. The role falls into two broad categories, namely the libertarian and the authoritarian. In the libertarian role, the media is free, at least in theory, of state or government ownership and control. The media in the Western World falls into this category.
The authoritarian role is the opposite of the libertarian i.e., the media is owned and/or controlled by the state or government. The media in the old Soviet Union, present day China, the Russian Republic and Cuba and many of the Third World countries fall into this category.
In many other Third World countries, however, there is a mix of the two, i.e. private media sitting side by side with state or government controlled media. Nigeria is an example of this admixture.
The theory of the libertarian media assumes that man is a rational being who can decide wisely for himself, provided he has accurate and adequate information. The mass media in this case is obliged by convention, if not by law, to provide fair, balanced and accurate information that will enable their readers and listeners to make sensible decisions.
The United States media is probably the best manifestation of this theory, thanks essentially to its Constitution which says in its First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”, and thanks also to a Freedom Information Act which makes it mandatory for government to give out information to members of the public upon request.
Contrary to widespread beliefs among media professionals, however, the protections of the First Amendment are not extended directly to journalists. Rather they are restricted to owners of the mass media. An owner may choose to give his editors and reporters a lot of discretion, but it is a matter of choice not law. In other words, an editor or a reporter has no legally enforceable right to have his views or his stories published by a media owner just like a reader cannot sue an editor or a publisher for refusing to publish his article or letter.
The main check against arbitrary behaviour on the part of the publisher or editor in this type of media, therefore, is not the constitution or the law but the reaction of the consumers of news and views. In a liberal society, the owner who ignores the interests of consumers of his products does so at his own risk, at least in the long run, since consumers are free to vote for or against a medium with their pockets. The theory is that the truth will always emerge through free reporting and discussions and any publication that consistently misinforms its readers or ignores their interests will, in the long run, fall by the way side.
Now, while the theory of the libertarian media is that the mass media are free to publish and be damned, the authoritarian role reverses the relationship between the state/government and the mass media. The authoritarian role makes the mass media the servant of the state. The assumption is that the state knows best and so the mass media should exist at the pleasure of the state. In other words it should report only those things the state says are in the interest of the people.
As I said at the beginning, the old Soviet Union operated this type of mass media. The succeeding Russian Republic still does. So also does Cuba and China, the largest country in the world with one-fifth of the world’s population.
Nigeria, as I have said, has a mix of both the libertarian and authoritarian mass media. Historically the authoritarian mass media was dominant in Nigeria for many decades. During the colonial era there was an active private press in the Lagos colony but in much of the rest of the country the official media held sway. Indeed for the electronic media, i.e. radio and television, government held complete monopoly until military president General Ibrahim Babangida introduced a law allowing for private radio and television in the late eighties.
However, in spite of their smaller numbers and narrower reach, the private press played a prominent role in the fight for independence. The same press also played a prominent role in the fight against the military dictators that have ruled Nigeria for most of its post independence years.
Today the private press is predominant among the print media. While most government newspapers have either collapsed or are half-dead, the private newspapers and magazines have thrived. Currently there are no less than two dozen fairly lively newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, Thisday, Trust, Leadership, Punch, Vanguard, The Nation, The Independent, Champion, New Age, Newswatch, Tell, Insider, The News, The Week and The Source.
For radio and television, government owned media remain dominant especially at the state level where each of the country’s 36 states owns a radio and television station. At the national level private radio and television stations have grown since Ray Power radio and the African Independent Television stations started broadcast in the early ‘90s. However, in reach they do not match the Federal Government owned Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria and the National Television Authority.
According to the 2004 Media World Yearbook, Nigeria has 82 AM, 35 FM and 11 short wave radio stations and no fewer than six television stations. Out of these only a handful are privately owned.
Having outlined the nature and composition of the Nigerian mass media, we may now go to the heart of the subject matter of our lecture, namely, what role the Nigerian mass media has in consolidating democracy in Nigeria.
Our topic assumes that Nigeria has a democracy. This assumption is not accurate. True we have had a civilian government since May 1999, but there has been an almost universal agreement among both local and foreign observers that the last general elections in 2003 was the most fraudulent Nigerians have even seen. Most opposition petitions against the elections before election tribunals may have failed but the failures have been essentially on technical grounds rather than on the merit of the cases.
However, not only have the 2003 elections raised questions about the credibility of Nigeria’s democracy, the approach of the 2007 general elections seems to have killed internal democracy in both the ruling and opposition parties alike. This is evident from the controversies and deep divisions that have trailed the primaries of all the parties.
The greatest culprit here is of course the ruling Peoples Democratic Party. PDP controls 28 of the 36 States government, not counting recent defections to it from some of the leading opposition parties. The party also controls over 2/3rd of the membership of the National Assembly.
As the ruling party, PDP has set a terrible example for others to follow. For example, delegates to its state congresses and its national convention in the run-up to this year’s general elections in April were handpicked rather than elected. Senior PDP officials like its Secretary General, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, who, like party delegates, have been selected rather than elected, have described this selection process as “acclamatory democracy”. Its chairman, retired Colonel Ahmadu Ali, even called it “garrison democracy.”
Not only has the ruling party not practiced internal democracy; it has consistently disrespected court orders and broken virtually all rules on the constitutional separation of powers. For example, since 1999, the PDP has never implemented the national budget in accordance with the National Assembly appropriations as stipulated by the constitution. In a true democracy, this alone would have lead to the impeachment of the president many times over.
In the light of the foregoing, one can safely say that since 2003 at least, there has been little or no democracy for the Nigerian media to consolidate. However, the absence of genuine democracy to consolidate has, in my view, imposed an even greater responsibility on the mass media as the so-called Fourth Estate of the Realm.
Nearly sixteen years ago, one Mr. John Tusa, then a senior manager at the BBC World Service, gave a lecture at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos. His topic was “Fourth Estate or Fifth Column - Media, the government and the State.” In that lecture he examined what the relationship of the media should be with the state. His conclusion was that any media worth the name must work to undermine any tyrannical state, although it must do so by respecting the rules of good reporting i.e., the rules of fairness, objectivity, accuracy, etc.
“The media,” Tusa said in the concluding paragraph of his November 12, 1991 lecture, “are the fourth estate of government in a plural democratic society. In a tyranny, they will be a Fifth column. The fifth column. And quite rightly so.”
Over seven years ago, one of Nigeria’s leading media experts and one-time Director-General of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Dr. Eddie Iroh, took what, on the surface at least, looked like the exact opposite of Tusa’s view. In an interview in Thisday of February 2, 2002, Iroh said, “We must not become adversary journalists. We must not see government as a permanent enemy, a permanent opponent, a permanent rival. Military rule, yes they were. But we are now in a democracy, not in an adversarial relationship with democracy.” (Emphasis mine).
From the sentence I emphasized in the Iroh’s quote, it should be obvious that the former FRCN DG agrees with Tusa that the mass media should oppose tyranny. But then military rule is not the only type of tyranny that exists. Iroh obviously did not think so, but I suspect most Nigerians do not see much difference between military rule and the form of democracy we have practiced since 1999, a democracy in which the ruling party has ruled in a most arbitrary fashion.
The indisputable fact that the media should fight tyranny makes the job of the Nigerian media clear cut; it should oppose the arbitrary and tyrannical rule, especially of the ruling PDP. For it is only by doing so that the mustard seed of democracy that was sown nearly eight years ago will have a chance of germinating and growing eventually into an oak tree.
In Nigeria the media actually has a constitutional responsibility to undermine tyranny. Section 22 of the Constitution states unequivocally that “The press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media shall all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this Chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people.” Few countries in the world, including the U.S., have imposed such a constitutional responsibility on their media.
To use the popular canine metaphor, the media must never shirk its role of being watchdog over the three arms of government and over society as a whole. Above all, however, it must also be a watchdog over itself if only because he who goes to equity, as the saying goes, must do so with clean hands.
The media, as Iroh seems to argue, should not bark just for barking sake. It should bark only for the purpose of bringing progress to society. The only way to do so is to report as fairly and accurately and as objectively as it is humanly possible. This means reporting from all the sides to an issue. In other words, the media should never be anybody’s attack dog just like it should not be anybody’s lapdog.
Continuing with our canine analogy, there is an expanding school of thought in journalism which believes the media should not just be society’s watchdog but should add the role of being society’s guide dog. This school of thought believes that journalism should not be neutral. Rather it should be partisan of the truth once the truth is arrived at through citizen dialogue across social, political and economic boundaries. Journalists themselves should, according to this school, participate actively in such dialogue, not just as journalists, but as citizens.
Advocates of this brand of journalism call it “public journalism.” One such advocate, Arthur Charity, published a book Doing Public Journalism in 1995 which described its form and structure. Public journalism, he said, is a recent phenomenon and is “a work in progress”.
Quoting from a book, Coming to Public Judgement: Making Democracy Work in a Complex World by Daniel Yankelovich, Charity said public journalism makes a distinction between public opinion that is fickle and one that is rock-solid. The role of public journalism is always to seek to transform the first which undermines democracy into the second which supports democracy.
Yankelovich lists three ways the mass media can help achieve this. The first is through identifying and respecting the peoples’ agenda instead of the media foisting their own or the politicians’ agenda on society. Journalists can do so, he said, by getting involved in the affairs of society as citizens rather than merely as professionals.
The second step, which Yankelovich called “working through” is achieved (1) by reducing issues to clear choices, (2) by expressing the choices through appealing to the core values people respect, (3) by spelling out the costs and consequences of each choice, (4) by bridging the expert-public gap through avoiding jargon in their reports, (5) by facilitating consensus building, and (6) by promoting civility in language.
The third and final step is to champion a consensus once it has been arrived at
The core of public journalism, i.e. the involvement of journalists in public affairs as citizens, is obviously a contentions issue. The obvious question is how does a journalist immerse himself in public affairs and yet retain his objectivity and fairness in reporting on society? The question seems to have no answer at first, but on second thought the idea is not as outrageous as it seems when you remember that it is, in any case, humanly impossible for any one to be completely objective. In other words the views of each and every one of us are influenced as much by our genetics as they are influenced by our ethnicity, geography and religion, etc.
In the circumstances all a journalist, like all human beings can do, is to make allowance for points of view other than his own in reporting news and debating issues. Getting involved in public affairs may make things seem a bit more difficult, but it does not make it impossible for one to be detached.
Now, whereas the debate remains open about whether the media should act as guide dogs there is hardly any disagreement with the notion that it should be society’s watchdog.
The question here is has the Nigerian media met the people’s expectation about its role in holding up government to its responsibility and accountability to the public? Gauging from what has been the obvious failure of democracy since 1999, the answer obviously seems to be no.
My view, however, is that such an assessment is asking too much of the media. The media can only watch over society and raise alarm. It does not have the authority or the power to deal with those who ignore or break the rules of politics or those of the socio-economy. That responsibility falls on the judiciary which interprets the rules and the executive which implements the rules.
The logical question to ask then is has the media barked enough since 1999 to draw public attention to the threats its fledging democracy faces? My answer is a qualified yes. In the first four years of the current civilian regime, the media, especially the private press which, historically, has been its most active section, seemed to have allowed the ruling PDP to get away with even blue murder. Probably because the private and the more independent media is largely owned and controlled by Southerners, more especially, South-Westerners, where President Obasanjo comes from, those media were largely uncritical of the executive until well after the general elections of 2003.
For years these media, encouraged by the president himself, tended to attack opposition to his style of governance as sour grapes on the part of those whose allegedly parasitic relationship with government he had dared end. The president’s crime, the media said all too often, was that he had stropped the old “business as usual” approach to governance. For example, the media consistently portrayed National Assembly as a bunch of corrupt and selfish individuals in its attempt to check many of Obasanjo’s constitutional breaches.
True, there was widespread corruption among the legislators, but commonsense alone suggested that the scale of corruption was likely to be even greater in the executive arm of government which controlled spending. Again the fact that for the first time in the country’s history the president himself retained the petroleum portfolio as the biggest source of public revenue without at the same time making its accounting transparent was enough to raise suspicions.
However, the media chose to focus its searchlight on the legislators until barely a couple of years ago. As things turned the scale of corruption in the presidency dwarfed that of the legislature, at least according to Transparency International the global good governance organization which the president himself had co-founded.
Probably the media’s loudest wake-up call came when it begun to emerge, not long after the beginning of his second term, that he was planning to amend the constitution to allow his self perpetuation in office. Since then the media have become more critical of the president and has also demonstrated more fairness and balance in its reports of the viewpoints of opposition elements.
Because of this change it is accurate to say that the media were able to play a critical role in defeating Obasanjo’s co-called Third Term agenda. It is also accurate to say the media have helped to expose the president’s much touted war against corruption as a highly selective one. Again the media have played an honourable role in exposing the attempt by the president to manipulate this year’s general election by using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent National Electoral Commission to disqualify opposition elements that pose credible challenges to its attempt to turn the country into a one-party, some would even say a one-man, dictatorship.
Compared to the way the mass media had attacked previous regimes for far lesser infractions than those committed by the Obasanjo regime, in particular the civilian regime of President Shehu Shagari whose overthrow some of them even called for, the media criticisms of Obasanjo and his civilian regime seem rather tame. Even then the criticisms have been heavy enough to show the world that the current Fourth Republic is hardly anybody’s idea of a democracy. The media has succeeded in showing the world that what we have is an attempt at civilian tyranny.
To that extent it has done a fairly good job of serving as society’s watchdog. However it can still do much better. The big question is will the media do its best to make sure no one succeeds in imposing tyranny on Nigerians?
Mohammed HarunaFebruary 24, 2007.
___________ References
1. Doing Public Journalism by Arthur Charity (The Gwifford Press New York, 1995).
2. Four Theories of the Press by Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson and Wither Schramm (University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 1963).
3. Understanding Media by Morsha Mchuhan (Rautledof Classics, London, New York, 1964).
4. Media World Yearbook, 2004 edited by Lanre Idowu (Diamond Publications Ltd., Lagos, 2004)
|