Mariam Mariam
Two months ago, in August, I was attending a seminar which brought media editors from different African countries to Accra, Ghana. We were exploring the possibilities of African media organisations opening up collaborative relationships to report African conflicts from an African perspective. It was an effort to have media practitioners presenting appropriate framing devices to apprehend African conflicts, as different from reportage of Africa from the frames of western journalism. As part of the two-week project, different resource persons were brought to lead discussions about different aspects of contemporary media practice and issues of conflict resolution. One of the more interesting sessions was led by the deputy director-general of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, GBC, the leading public service broadcaster in the country. We had been discussing the democratic space in Africa and the place of the public service broadcaster in its preservation. It turned out that I was rather engaged in a heated disputation of the premise of the gentleman from GBC, whose views I understood as the bureaucratic perspective normally purveyed by those who have been cultured within those institutions and over the years, have risen to the top of their organisations.
Generally lacking in theoretical grounding about the place of the media, they have imbibed ideological notions about the role of the media in society, which over defend the ruling elite at particular junctures in society. The people as far as they are concerned cannot be trusted to discern their own interests, and media exists to spoonfeed them. Their loyalty to regimes in power is total. I had argued that the public service broadcaster must leam to walk the careful balance between loyalty to regime and loyalty to the country. They must be institutions which valorise greater fidelity to an overall sense of the national and the people, who they often regard as illiterate, and therefore unable to discern their own interests. “How many Ghanaians were ‘educated’ when they were mobilised by Nkrumah to defeat colonialism?” I had asked the Ghana media executive, when he condescendingly referred to the ‘low level of education’ of the Ghanaian people.
I have gone this far to present a background for my column this week, because I have been thinking about the output of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), much vaunted as Africa’s larges television network. The way it has been conducted, especially in respect of national crises; its coverage of such issues as the fuel price hike, the excessive pandering to the whims of the executive arm of government, all potentially make the Nigerian Television Authority a veritable danger to the democratic project in Nigeria, if Nigerians and media-centered civil society organisations do not wake up to the challenge. In the past two years or so, we have authored four editorials in Daily Trust about the way that the NTA has been systematically debased as a public service broadcaster, by the people at its head. One of the most unacceptable things they have done, is to use the NTA to broadcast every week, President Obasanjo’s religious devotions from the Aso Villa chapel. The use of the public medium of television in that most divisive and irresponsible manner, has never happened before in Nigeria’s recent history. But we seat through hours of the spectacle each week, as NTA inflicts the private devotion of President Obasanjo on usi through the public medium of the NTA.
Of course, it is acceptable practice to broadcast clips of our leaders at worship during significant religious festivals, such as Easter, Christmas and the two Eids; but with Obasanjo in the Villa, the NTA people simply went berserk. Our sensibilities couldn’t mean a thing to them. What matters was that ‘in-your-face’ sycophancy that was not thought through, for its potentials for mischief and resentment in a religiously polarised country as Nigeria. We are reminded weekly that a self-confessed ‘born again’ Baptist is now in power, and a comical legion led by Professor Jerry Gana all come into the video frame broadcast at us, each week. What we see is in fact not a religious broadcast, but a peculiar political manipulation of religion, every Sunday.
Related to this was the way NTA was turned to reporting virtually from one church to the other every Sunday night at nine o’clock, as if the only news fit to report was happening in the various churches around Abuja and Lagos. We had drawn attention to the anomaly, and as a sop, they decided to begin a token broadcast of Friday sermons from a number of Jumat mosques around the Abuja area. It possibly has not occurred to the NTA leadership that their uneven handling of religious broadcast can only deepen religious suspicion in the country, endanger our collective well being, and potentially undermine our democratic process. Another area of bastardisation of television that goes on, at NTA, is the way that the organisation has been handling major national issues; the most notable being the fuel price hike by the government, and the response of the labour movement and civil society organisations. The NTA has been lacking in an objective presentation of the issues involved, instead it chose to present the government’s side of the issues, and broadcasts, adnauseum, clips about a so-called need for dialogue; there are also those clips and jingles about Obasanjo having been elected to do something or the other, etc. Even traditional rulers have been conscripted as part of a campaign of disinformation, to give the false impression that it is labour that is unreasonable in all the issues at stake.
The NTA insults its so-called thirty million viewers, when it presents a false picture of reality, as it has done in its reportage of the current nation-wide strike. Pictures of Lagos streets are broadcast and we are told that business was going on as usual, when all around us, we can see the realities beyond NTA’s assault of our sensibilities. Urban lumpen elements are then interviewed and choreographed to denounce the NLC and the strike action.
It should be pointed out to the over zealous managers of the NTA that living in a state of denial does not remove the fact that those issues they refuse to report are known by their viewers. Their unprofessional and cynical manipulation of television alienates viewers from the medium and destroys the credibility of their work. Unfortunately, completely devoid o f a sense of history and a basic wisdom of the national, patriotic use of the NTA, they are far more interested in personal survival through excessive pandering to the presidency, including those hours when the comings and goings of President Obasanjo’s wife, Stella, are inflicted upon the Nigeria viewer.
The great public service broadcasters like the BBC and SABC, have played far greater service to the promotion of their societies, including the survival of their ruling classes, not by the sickening sycophancy that we see day-in, day-out on NTA, but they have strengthened their state apparatus by upholding the basic journalistic ethics of objectivity, fairness and balance. So when issues emerge, they do not keep off the screens the issues in disputation or the viewpoint unacceptable to the Prime Minister. All the sides to the issue are presented objectively and fairly, with the belief that in a democratic society, citizens are better able to take decision when they have an all-round appreciation of developments in society. From the perspective of radical scholarship, what such great media outfits as the BBC do, is to incorporate the oppositional values, into ‘common sense’ frames of everyday journalism. The fact that these values get reported fairly, mean they become part of the day-to-day reality of democratic society. The media become more believable and are trusted by different segments of society as being able to present a true reflection of the complexities o f a modem society. The unprofessional, crudely propagandistic attitude of the NTA, cannot enhance its prestige in our society, and it doesn’t help deepen the content of our democracy either. There are problems of -official interference, that should not be underestimated, but there is also the attitude of those Heading institution. Where they have a professional attitude, and are imbued with a vision of the place of the NTA, in the overall stability of the state and society, they can boldly resist the interference of often over-zealous political masters, who want to bend the institution to the disreputable levels we see today. The bold executive works conscientiously to protect the independence of the media he runs, and if he cannot protect that space, he can voluntarily resign to save both his integrity and the reputation of the organisation. We have seen this in recent times at the BBC, over the “sexed up” dossier leading to the invasion of Iraq. It is this attitude that needs to be cultivated by whoever heads NTA; that is how to take it away from the way it is presently being run: unprofessional and sycophantic.
It is also imperative for the control of the organisation to move from under the foot of the president, to a space of democratic control, with the imput of the National Assembly and civil society organisations, being factored into the choice of who runs that behemoth. It is such an ambience that can guarantee the tenure of its executives, and also ensure that it is run professionally.
The truth is that the Nigerian Television Authority should be one of the great cultural institutions of a democratic Nigeria. It should be the icon of objective, balanced and professional journalism; one that all segments of society should respect because of the way that it is affecting our lives, in its believability.
But who on earth, except the circles around the presidency, that can trust the NTA today? In which ways would living a lie, help to uphold the integrity of the organisation, as it has done with issues around the fuel price hike and the strike called by the Labour movement? These are serious issues for the organisation and its executives. They must be critically analysed for the sake of the organisation and the role it can play in the nation’s democratic process.
Nigerians want an NTA that will be a great media organisation in the mould of the great public service broadcasters, not one that will fail to accurately reflect a crisis situation in our country. Nigeria are intelligent enough to know that the democratic process is a tortuous path of building ever-incremental levels of consensus out of often difficult conflicting scenarios. Its no use pretending that what is required for national development is the peace o f the graveyard. The Nigerian people will not oblige the ruling class with that kind of conformity. The Nigerian Television Authority must know that its loyalty should be to the Nigerian people, not to the regime in power today. Regimes will not last forever, but the people would. It should also accurately reflect the vibrancy of our democratic process. This is what the NTA has failed to do so’ far, and the thirty million viewers are not happy with NTA.
