By Charles Chukwuedo Snr, Esq.
THE RECENTLY concluded ThisDay newspaper awards, held in Lagos to commemorate its 30th anniversary, exemplify a troubling and increasingly pervasive culture within Nigeria’s media landscape.
It is both paradoxical and hypocritical that ThisDay, the very organisation behind Arise Morning Show, whose presenters are notorious for excoriating politicians over corruption and misgovernance, should engage in a practice that is itself ethically dubious.
The notion that a media establishment, which ought to remain an impartial arbiter of truth and accountability, assumes the role of conferring accolades upon politicians, corporate executives, and public officeholders is deeply problematic.
In developed democracies, journalistic institutions restrict such recognitions to excellence within the media profession and allied disciplines.
However, Nigerian newspapers have brazenly expanded these awards to include contrived categories such as Governor of the Year, Banker of the Year, and Senator of the Year.
This is not journalism; it is an elaborate charade of patronage and sycophancy, which undermines the credibility of the press.
The ramifications of this practice are significant. Consider the sheer governance hours squandered by public officials who abandoned pressing state affairs to grace this event.
WAFactor in the financial implications, state-sponsored entourages, travel expenses, and other logistics, all footed by the taxpayer.
It is nothing short of an egregious misallocation of public funds. These leaders are elected to serve, not to revel in self-congratulatory gatherings that offer no tangible benefit to the citizenry.
Beyond the immediate wastage, the deeper institutional damage cannot be overstated. When a media organisation, which should function as society’s moral compass, actively participates in the canonisation of the same figures it is meant to scrutinise, it engenders a crisis of credibility.
How does ThisDay or any other complicit media outfit retain the moral authority to objectively critique the very individuals they have just decorated with awards? The inevitable consequence is a weakened press, one that can no longer hold power to account without suspicion of bias or ulterior motive.
This raises a pressing question: where are the regulatory bodies in all of this? Media organisations do not operate in a vacuum.
Institutions such as the Nigerian Press Council and the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON) have a duty to safeguard the ethical integrity of journalism.
Yet, their silence in the face of these glaring infractions suggests either complicity or impotence. A dog whose owner refuses to restrain it will inevitably go on a rampage, biting indiscriminately, unchecked and unaccountable.
In such a scenario, responsibility does not lie solely with the dog but also with the negligent owner who failed to act. The media regulatory bodies must be held to account for failing to curb these excesses and allowing journalistic standards to erode.
If media houses in Nigeria are insistent on hosting award ceremonies, they must restrict them to recognising journalistic excellence.
Anything beyond that transmutes journalism into a transactional enterprise, where influence and patronage replace integrity and independence.
The press should remain resolute in its duty to inform, investigate, and challenge authority, rather than become an extension of the political establishment’s public relations machinery.
The Nigerian media must make a definitive choice: does it seek to be a vanguard of democracy, or does it wish to entrench itself as an accessory to the excesses of the political elite? If the latter prevails, the public should brace for the continued erosion of journalistic objectivity and the slow but steady decline of the media’s role as the Fourth Estate.
