Cash-and-Carry journalism in focus as NUJ addresses its membership

Playing host to representatives of media houses with presence in Abuja, the leadership of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) identified unethical practices by its members and canvassed desired change. The president of a Christian organization with headquarters in Jos granted a request for a press interview. The reporter who made the request turned up for […]

Playing host to representatives of media houses with presence in Abuja, the leadership of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) identified unethical practices by its members and canvassed desired change.
The president of a Christian organization with headquarters in Jos granted a request for a press interview. The reporter who made the request turned up for the interview at the appointed time and the reverend gentleman thought the conduct of the interview was all there was to it with the reporter in that material time; but, no! The reporter would return regarding that particular interview.
Relating how the event developed and how perplexed he was by it, the spokesman of the Church said, “The journalist came back to my boss a few days after the interview with copies of his newspaper containing the interview. He brought with him a sheet of paper asking us to pay N250,000 for the published interview. How could he do that? All he asked when he first came to us was an interview. He didn’t say we were to pay for it.”
The organization in that story was lucky to have a defense: they could tell the dubious reporter, and they did, that there was no agreement binding them to the payment slip that the reporter produced. In other words, the reporter was in no position to blackmail the Church.
Blackmail against vulnerable victims of cash- and-carry journalists is a practice inflicting journalism which embarrasses many in the profession and tasks its umbrella body. And such strain of ethical misbehavior which is probably as old as the profession itself, is evidently widespread – and it worsens as the circle of media practitioners widens.
Two years ago, the Abuja council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) had to alert the public to the activities of some ‘fake journalists and quacks’ who the union said were blackmailing top politicians and public office holders by sending text messages claiming that they (the journalists) had detected scams which they would lay bare unless they were paid sums of money.
The union said it was prompted into issuing the alert by an instance in Kaduna involving a ‘junk magazine’ which claimed to have written a book ‘chronicling alleged rot’ within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Administration in Abuja.
The said magazine allegedly went to the extent of soliciting negative articles from members of the public to complete the book to present as a weapon of blackmail in hope of extracting money from the ‘indicted’ FCT official, after which the official would be certified innocent.
Blackmail is just one of a multitude of ways in which unethical journalists go out of bounds, most often with the intent of making money in the process and sometimes also for other reasons, and could often prove harmful not only to the immediate victim but to the larger society as well.
President of the NUJ, Comrade Waheed Odusile, speaking at a recent event, gave an instance of how one journalist can cause havoc to the society and drag journalism into the mud, saying, “Many believe that the media in Nigeria have a penchant always for pushing political disagreements towards dissent in order to have a more dramatic reportable event.”
He contended that such tendency to sensationalism is often intended to sell newspapers and that the perpetuators typically do not care if their act sets whole communities on fire.   
Odusile who expressed his misgivings during a news briefing at the NUJ Secretariat in Abuja two weeks ago indicated specifically that favour seeking journalists had not been sufficiently helpful in the fight against corruption. He said, “Many have argued that often the partisan moralization of serious corruption charges especially by journalists is the reason sometimes corrupt politicians escape unpunished either because corrupt or timid judges tilt the scales of justice or because crooked lawyers get emboldened to use technicality to clog the wheel of justice.”
Odusile who was addressing the first of what the NUJ national leadership plan to be a quarterly news conferences, took much time to reel out some other instances of unethical journalism.  He singled out for discussion, too, what he described as selective reporting, saying, “We cannot claim to report responsibly if for any personal reason or in deference to any group or personal interests we choose to report some issues and elect to ignore others; or if we elect to expose some conducts but deliberately opt to conceal others; or if we underreport some matters but luridly sensationalize others; or if we doggedly defend some interests but roundly assail others; or if we choose to be objective about some facts but about others we elect instead to be subjective.”
Making an appeal to members of the NUJ, the NUJ president entreated, “We must together rededicate ourselves to the codes and ethics of the profession which require that the freedom which we exercise to report society is not to be enjoyed without fetters but to be exercised with all sense of professional responsibility.”
Giving a hint that those to whom such an appeal would not be effective could have rough times ahead, Odusile announced that he was working to realize a pre-election promise he made in July that he as the NUJ president would have unethical practices punished. He said, “You will recall that as part of our campaign promises, we spoke of our resolve on assumption of office to resuscitate our ethics and disciplinary committee to take care of issues of ethical misconduct on the part of our members, and also avail members of the public an avenue to  protest any wrongdoing by any journalist.
“The committees have been set up in each of the 36 states councils and Abuja, while an appellate committee has equally been set up at the national secretariat under the chairmanship  of one-time national president of  NUJ, Comrade Bonie Iwuoha. We will like to appeal to all journalists to adhere strictly to the ethics of the profession as this is the only way we can continue to retain the confidence of the public.”
Odusile’s NUJ will have a lot to do at restraining media practitioners, it would seem, especially with the coming and mushrooming of the social media, a strain of the growing mass media practiced by anyone with the capacity to put some words together to say something, anything, and against which he kicked in earlier comments and events.
He and other leaders of the NUJ at national and state levels believe, however, that daunting as the task may be, it could be done.