We need to ‘arm’ new set of journalists, covering elections —Lanre Arogundade, Director, IPC

WHAT informed your decision to write the new book?

The book, ‘Media and Elections: Professional Responsibilities of Journalists’ represents an epitome of what I have done over the last 25 years as a media trainer, democracy enthusiast, free expression activist and media resource personnel. It is what I give as my own contribution to the development of media and democracy in Nigeria. It is a book  that is very practical in nature, that is not just looking at theory of what we do, because at the end of the day, there are so many legislations like the electoral act, the Nigeria Broadcasting Code and even the Nigerian Media Code of Electoral Coverage that  specifies the dos and don’ts for journalists during elections. But the ‘how’ is often missing. It’s like you, going to the doctor and  you complain of headache and the doctor decides to prescribe some drugs for you. You know such prescriptions would always contain some formula on how the drugs should be used. So I’m really looking at the ‘how’ side of it. When you say balanced reporting, what does it mean? How can I be balanced, when you say I shouldn’t be biased as a reporter, even when I’m working for a proprietor that has political interest? How is it possible for me to eliminate my biases? If you say I should be gender sensitive, how do I become gender sensitive? How do I have such consciousness? So I began to look at all these hows and then begin to give detailed guidelines, deriving from my experience as a journalism trainer for several years, not  just  in Nigeria, but also in the Gambia and Liberia. I also cover elections myself, and in my organization, the International Press Centre, we monitor media coverage of elections, where we look at the strengths and weaknesses of our coverage. So I just wrote this book to help fill some of those gaps that we have  identified, believing that it will  be very useful, not just for political reporters, but also for each and every journalist. That is why one of the chapters in the book talks about our democratic accountability responsibilities, how we need to go about holding politicians accountable. People don’t know that for example to be a good election reporter, you must be a good budget reporter. You must be able to follow the budget, to look for elements in the budget that capture  promises or that did not capture them, and ask questions about them. People do not also know that to be a good reporter, you must be a good researcher. You need to be able to do research of the issues you are covering. So it’s more of a kind of industry-derived book, that details in practical terms, what our responsibilities should be. I also feel that we do not have to wait till 2023 before we begin to arm the next generation of journalists who would cover the elections. With this appointment now, many of our experienced political reporters and editors are going into government to work with various politicians, so we always have that vacuum.

A new generation would step up, and we need to arm that generation. The book is for practising journalists, it’s also for future journalists, students of Mass Communication, students of Journalism, as well as academic scholars. This is a book that when a lecturer is teaching in the classroom, may be he’s teaching balanced reporting,  he can say go and read this chapter in Lanre Arogundade’s book.

• Nigeria devalued by leaders without values ― Moghalu

How would you rate the performance of media in the coverage of the last general elections?

I will say that if you consider the fact that the environment is not that conducive, I will say our performance is not that bad. In fact, in the coverage of the 2019 elections, we learnt from our mistakes in 2015. In the mainstream media, we didn’t see elements of hate speech, like we had in 2015. We didn’t see  elements where journalists deliberately go to stoke the embers of conflict. So we are happy about that. But there are other down sides. For instance, we didn’t report women enough. We didn’t report people living with disability, the vulnerable, enough. And this is what we call our inclusive reporting responsibility. So these are some of the gaps. Then, in our ability to report the election, we are also handicapped by the attitude of our security agencies. For instance, during the last general elections, despite the fact that many of our colleagues had INEC identification, they were  still  harassed during the elections. Some were prevented from doing their work. So the book itself is also calling on these key institutions to do more for  the media. We are all saying the media should do this and that, but are they also doing enough for the media to do our work. So I will say on the balance that it’s not been a bad experience, but certainly we can do better, especially when it comes to our post election responsibilities.

Your take on the need for journalists to be insured to allow them effectively discharge their duties?

Some years back, when Garba Mohammed was NUJ president, we reviewed the Code of Ethics for Journalists in Nigeria, and we introduced what is called a Bill of Rights to that code. The bill says that journalists who cover sensitive or hazardous beats must be entitled, not just to insurance from NUJ, but also from their employers. Covering elections is like covering a warfare, especially in our own country. We knew various flash-points  during that election where everybody was afraid to go. So we need to address those kinds of issues. We need more of multi-stakeholder dialogue that involves INEC,  media groups,  media proprietors, the security agencies and also the political parties. They owe us such responsibilities much as we owe them and the larger society.