The journalistic cult of poverty has a supreme theme – the morally-deficient journalist. This theme is pitifully projected by journalism’s highly celebrated ambassadors in the corridors of power and the public space. Rather than evolve as heroic shiners of light and purveyors of truth, speaking to keep all savagery in straits, in the true tradition of modern, high-cultivated men of letters, they choose to manifest like accidents to society.
Picture a severely skewed news story bearing the newspaper Daily Editor’s byline and the curious tag: “With political intelligence unit reports.” Picture how ridiculous it must be to witness the metamorphosis of presumed intellect into dimwittedness. At first glance, his touted investigation rankles an ominous note. His heartfelt truths wander in logic and polemic like an untamed gypsy, burnishing a world in which he ought to serve as a bastion of love with hate – urging it into bitterness and everlasting darkness. Severely compromised by greed and lack of pride, he served former President Goodluck Jonathan’s propaganda train like a junkyard dog with neither tact nor freewill. His brief was to impugn the name of Muhammadu Buhari now President Muhammadu Buhari. Unfortunately for him, Jonathan lost the elections and the desperate editor shamelessly switched sides to court camp Buhari, in frantic bid to reclaim his mindless and lucrative servitude to the ruling class. As you read, the tedious character is without a brief. Few weeks ago, he was given the boot by his employer. It didn’t matter that he served both the interests of his employer and the ruling class unquestioningly. When time came to play politics and shed dead weight, the desperate editor was cast away, like a disposable integer.
As you read many more newspaper editors and their reporters are manifesting at the ruling class’ bidding and your bidding, into the stamen that lets down the azalea, the comforters that bring grief, the emissaries of needless hate orchestrated in the interest of the ruling class.
Today, tyranny attains ultimate refinement in the news columns; this brings to mind that memorable jest by Norman Mailer that “Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.” Journalists are still the butt of the most demeaning jokes and premeditated put-downs in the social arena. Nobody thinks much of a journalist; in the eyes of big business and the ruling class, the journalist whatever his designation or job title, is the manipulable pawn and necessary evil that has to be courted and tolerated.
This resonates badly for the Nigerian mob; the nation’s critical mob to be precise. Mob culture requires that he who would adorn the cloak of defender of the masses’ rights should be upright and flawless in character, work and personal ethics. Such admirable traits are rarely attributable to the Nigerian journalist manager and the press in general.
The Nigerian mob, like every other rabble, seeks fulfillment of tyrant fantasies; such fantasies often vary between the destruction of an unpopular government, despot or worn-out civilization. Reality however, affirms the impotence of the Nigerian mob. The latter is continually tamed and kept on a leash by a ruling class that capitalizes on its obvious handicaps: its impulsiveness, insensibility to reason and judgment and overt sentimentality.
Despite its handicaps, the Nigerian mob conveniently picks on a scapegoat for its infinite timidity and cluelessness: the press. The journalist is expected to serve as the conscience and moral compass of the society, challenging the government and checking the excesses of the ruling class, uncompromisingly and selflessly.
As utopian fantasies go, these are noble expectations of the journalist but the Nigerian mob ignores the cultural shift of the society from conventional morality to unbridled hedonism. It assumes, hypocritically, that the press will continually give it honest and developmental news even as every segment of the society strive to unmoor the journalist from his role as a crucial appendage of the nation’s critical mob. The public, comprising big business, the government, and civil societies among other mob segments, vilify any journalist or news medium that seeks to educate and engage rather than entertain and perpetuate their biased definitions of reality.
Contemporary Nigeria embraces the emotional pageant that has turned news into paid publicity and mindless entertainment and the journalist in response kowtows to lusts and vanities of modern society. Beneath the mindless glamour and cultural decline however, an insidious reality festers in the death of hope and incandescence of tragedy. Prevalent socioeconomic tragedies necessitate the emergence and elevation among the citizenry of the bungling and sadistic, and the beginning of a differentiation cum tyranny of social grades.
At the centre of the turmoil is the journalist whose fate is so critically bound with the country’s but he obviously does not know that hence the cluelessness, treachery and brazen recklessness that characterizes his work. Consequently, the Nigerian journalist manifests as an accident to society. He perpetually loses his grasp of the issues at stake; fundamentally hollow and benumbed to valor, he resigns to the powers that be, blaming the tyranny of the ruling class and the proverbial ‘system’ for his inability to fulfill his professional and moral obligations to the society.
Rather than pose a challenge to the system that domesticates and enslaves him, he chooses the easiest way out and plays junkyard dog to tyrant cabals and the predatory bunch constituting the nation’s ruling class. He assumes the role of a poseur and pretends to fight for the interest of the public. This sad charade is continually perpetuated across esteemed leader-writers’ polemics in foremost newspapers’ columns.
The contemporary journalist trades in all manners of truths, deploying sophistry and shades of impressive fallacies in the interest of whatever social divide fulfills his lust for relevance and economic survival. We can blame the society and advance all forms of isms and ostentatious arguments to justify our descent the steep slope of amorality and socioeconomic expediency – it wouldn’t excuse our treachery to our calling and the Nigerian citizenry.
If Nigeria chooses to exist as a land of savages, it’s our responsibility to nudge her back on to the path of humanity and progress – for only in such clime can we positively evolve and prosper.
The traditional, conscientious journalist is going extinct today along with true, dependable news culture because Nigeria obsesses and migrates to the pseudo-reality of the internet and reality shows. It is no doubt ironical that the masses would turn around to blame the press for not fulfilling its roles to the society.
It’s about time we stopped narrowing the debates and spotlight to the shenanigans and petty differences of the ruling class and instead aspire to serve as a true voice to the voiceless. There is no magical antidote to our decline and death as a crucial part of the nation’s critical mob.
Real progress will manifest in the country when we start demanding that the ruling class march in virtual lockstep with promises they make. Whatever the tone and dialect of intellectualisation that characterizes our news culture, posterity will judge us by how truthfully we fulfill our roles as conscience and watchdog of the society.
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