Social media: Reporters on the move

There are many effects that stem from internet usage and foremost among this is enforcing journalism’s age old ethics of social responsibility, truthfulness, accuracy, fairness, as social media is a free for all forum.Media practitioners have discussed at length the need to organise the social media reporters for better and more development focused news dissemination. […]

There are many effects that stem from internet usage and foremost among this is enforcing journalism’s age old ethics of social responsibility, truthfulness, accuracy, fairness, as social media is a free for all forum.
Media practitioners have discussed at length the need to organise the social media reporters for better and more development focused news dissemination. Happily, the on line media practitioners have organised themselves and are already contributing their quota to ethical journalism practice in an election year. Danlami Nmodu an online publisher of Newsdiary reports that:
Online news publishers under the aegis of the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers, GOCOP  gathered in Abuja February 2015 to brainstorm on peaceful elections. The workshop which deliberated on the role of the media in ensuring peaceful elections was organized by the UNDP.Social-media workers are as varied as their technologies. These technologies take on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis,social networks, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. Other technologies are blogging, picture sharing, wall-posting, music-sharing etc. For the purpose of our work here in Nigeria, the on line publishers produce magazines and blogs and have formed a professional group. They have also been contributing to development of media reporting.
In his contribution at the UNDP workshop, Mr. Dapo  Olorunyomi, editor  in chief of Premium Times delivered a thought provoking lecture on ‘agenda setting:citizen engagement and contributions of online media to peaceful elections” Mr. Olorunyomi said  the best form of journalism today is happening online. He also said that journalism must be guided by proper ethical considerations to ensure credibility. He challenged online publishers to think through the proper business model that will ensure independence.
Mr YZ Yau of the Kano based Centre for Information Technology and Development CITAD, equally  presented a paper on the dangers of hate speech and cited  recent cases of  hate speech or dangerous speeches. He urged publishers to guard against dangerous speech by refusing to give publicity to those who make them. Yau also advised that where such hate speech is made, the speaker should   be identified  as naming shaming those who indulge in the practice should be a matter of priority.  He cited a recent case of dangerous speech where the Katsina State Governor, Ibrahim Shema, was caught on tape calling opposition members cockroaches. Other Speakers included Mrs Stella Jibrin  from Nigeria Press Council. She explained the challenges facing the organisation and also presented a recent media monitoring project undertaken by the Council. A representative of the Lagos based International Press Centre presented the organisation’s media monitoring  report  which focused on some online media..
UNDP’s head of the good governance project addressed the publishers briefly during which he expressed appreciation to the journalists for their robust coverage of election matters so far. Mrs.   Toyin Gabriel, UNDP’s  media expert who anchored the event urged online publishers to take full advantage of the gathering by exploiting the opportunities  offered to promote  good journalism practice.