This is your first AIRTIMEplus column of 2019! So, it’s appropriate to wish you Happy New Year/Yair (Yair means the year on air). As it happens with individuals, the beginning of the year is usually when people make all kinds of resolutions. Never mind that these resolutions may dissolve before mid-January. However, instead of resolutions, I prefer to share my expectations (airxpectations) from the airwaves. These are things I hope will improve (or be sustained) on TV, radio and in the film industry, Nollywood. Then of course, I invite you, the reader, to air your own airxpectations. And why not? We all want to have a better time on air after all. So, what do you want to see and hear on the airwaves?
For the purpose of this first column, and due to the fact that this is an election year, my expectations are mostly about TV/radio broadcasters and professionalism, pre-and post-elections. Will we see a balanced and fair coverage during this period of elections? I’m thinking of the major TV and radio stations. For TV, there’s only really AIT and Channels TV. You could include Silverbird Television (my late father usually watched STV immediately after NTA Network News) and TVC. And there are quite a few on-air personalities on radio breathlessly reading anything placed in front of them.
What about NTA, you must be wondering. Though NTA reaches more people, especially in the rural areas; I’m not sure I can ask for it to act as if it’s being run by money from the Nigerian taxpayers. For what’s it’s worth, we know where NTA’s loyalties lie. This is the point I want to get across to even the privately-owned TV/radio stations. Perhaps, the time has come for them to show what side they are on.
After all, in developed countries, everyone knows where to place media companies. In the US for example, Fox News is extremely pro-Republican/pro-Trump, to the extent that it influences the president’s policies. I’m aware that we do not really have a properly defined ideology in Nigeria. But we do have something like AGIP-Any Government in Power. So, instead of leading viewers/listeners on, mouthing some empty rhetoric about impartiality and professionalism, TV/radio stations should be upfront about any hidden interests.
All that aside, whatever happened to journalists doing their jobs properly? Why should it take a New Year ‘sermon’ to remind TV and radio stations to stop insulting viewers’ intelligence? Under normal circumstances, these are things that would ordinarily be par for the course. Not to mention the fact that we do have regulators who should monitor these things. And I’m sure there are a few professional associations who supposedly encourage members to be, well, professional. But these are not normal circumstances; just in case you have not noticed.
Mind you, there are real consequences to TV/radio stations’ abdication of their professional duties. I know a few people who stopped listening to news from Nigerian TV stations in the immediate aftermath of the last elections, my humble self included; especially those supposedly analytical political programmes. It wasn’t just the shallowness of the analysis but the pretence that anything remotely original was going on. Unfortunately, Nigeria gets by on an elevated system of mediocrity-the type that ‘has gone to Harvard’
I decided to check what my New Year expectations were in the last election year-2015 but it turns out that I didn’t do a New Yair edition of AIRTIME in January 2015, although there was one for January 2014. Surprisingly, that edition quoted from my airxpectations for 2013. I’m saying all of this, before showing you those airxpectations so that you can see what, if anything, has changed, six years on:
“Last year, my biggest concern was for more integrity from journalists on the air. I suppose integrity may be too vague, so let’s settle for a bit of professionalism. See the excerpts from January 2013: “I worry that one can no longer trust most of what’s on air. Same goes for newspapers (but then this column isn’t about the print media). Same could be said of the media worldwide but the Nigerian situation is definitely far worse because there are almost no checks and avenues for recourse.
The point is, anyone can go on air, say anything, no matter how untrue; even when almost everyone knows the truth, yet get away with it. The immediate reason is that the journalist who should act as the devil’s advocate would have abdicated that role…back in the day, journalists were taught to always get the other side. Now, even when the other side is willing, it’s ignored because ‘tori no go come sweet’, or whatever the other side presents is taken and further twisted by some unscrupulous people to suit pecuniary interests.
On A.M TV especially, bogus experts/activists are falling over themselves, passed off as real analysts saying all sorts. I wish journalists, TV owners or whoever is concerned enough about the integrity of broadcasting, would step up to the plate this year. It shouldn’t always be about who has more money to throw around…”
There is not much to add except to enjoin more TV stations to embrace online broadcasting- live streaming. Radio stations appear to be ahead in this regard.
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