NIGERIA: NBC WARNS ERRANT BROADCASTING STATIONS

NIGERIA
> MEDIA MONITOR
>
> Monday June 24
>
>NBC WARNS ERRANT BROADCASTING STATIONS
>HELPING MEDIA COMMUNICATE GENDER ISSUES BETTER
>BROADCAST CODE REVIEW STIRS EXCITEMENT IN MINNA
>GANA AND JOURNALISTS' WELFARE
>
>
> NBC WARNS ERRANT BROADCASTING STATIONS
> The Punch, June 18, 2002
> As the 2003 national election draws near, the watchdog
> of the Broadcasting industry, the Nigerian
> Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has threatened to invoke
> the law against any broadcasting station that shows
> any preference or bias in reporting activities of
> politicians and their political parties.
>
> NBC wants broadcasting companies to ensure fairness,
> equity, accuracy, and objectivity in all their
> reporting, charging them not to allow the power of
> incumbency of the serving political office holders, to
> influence them into shifting their loyalty from the
> Nigerian people to certain individuals.
>
> It urged all stations to henceforth give equal and
> qualitative airtime to every registered political
> party, irrespective of their relationship with any
> politician.
>
> HELPING MEDIA COMMUNICATE GENDER ISSUES BETTER
> Guardian, June 19, 2002
>
> To increase the level of gender awareness of media
> practitioners, particularly, editors of gender and
> women pages, Girls Power Initiative, a Calabar based
> adolescent NGO, put together a two-day workshop
> tagged: "Communicating to Reduce Gender Discrimination
> and Violence Against Women". Held at the National
> Museum, Calabar, other objectives of the workshop,
> include, to enhance gender consciousness among media
> practitioners, to inform media practitioners about the
> scope of gender based violence for more informed and
> gender sensitive coverage/reportage. The workshop
> also sought to inculcate and improve analytical skills
> among media practitioners.
>
> Coordinator, South south zone, and chairperson board
> of Trustee GPI, Dr. Bene Madunagu, set the tone for
> the workshop by defining gender "as socially
> constructed and culturally variable roles that women
> and men play in their daily lives. It refers to a
> structural relationship of inequality between men and
> women as manifested in labour markets and in political
> structures, as well as in the household. It is often
> reinforced by custom, law and specific development
> policies. Gender refers to sets of relationships,
> attributes, roles, beliefs and attitude that define
> what being a woman or a man is within society".
>
> From several of the quick tests administered to the
> journalists, it was obvious that many of the
> participants were ignorant of the effect of certain
> words that they use when writing. Resource persons
> therefore, encouraged the use of words that do not
> give the impression that only men are being referred
> to when used.
>
> On the way forward, Dr. Madunagu said, the media has
> an important role to play by ensuring that they
> re-examine and interpret culture and tradition in
> order to sift what is positive, and question the
> oppressive aspects that humiliate and degrade women
> and violate women's rights. The media can also foster
> gender equality by fostering new models of social
> gender relations based on mutual respect and
> true/honest partnership.
>
> Participants were also charged to utilise every
> communication channel to promote equal representation
> of women and men in discussions and all human
> endeavour.
>
> The media was also charged to promote positive and
> diverse portrayals of women and girls' sexuality,
> sexual relations based on mutual respect and autonomy
> and informed and safe sex. Other points include,
> developing multimedia campaign and advocacy strategies
> for public including decision-makers and programme
> planners, that provide accurate information on sexual
> and reproductive health problems such as, violence
> against women, sexual violence and abuse, and harmful
> sexual practices including female genital mutilation,
> where and when to seek services including special
> campaigns on e.g the danger signs of pregnancy and the
> importance of seeking care.
>
> BROADCAST CODE REVIEW STIRS EXCITEMENT IN MINNA
> Vanguard, June 19, 2002
> How much of The National Broadcasting Code do you
> know? This has always been one sour point between
> broadcast executives and managers, and the National
> Broadcasting Commission (NBC) which accuses the
> broadcasters for not devoting time to study the Code
> which guides their operations.
>
> Husbanded during the tenure of Dr. Tom Adaba and
> revised much later, the Code was once described as the
> Bible of Broadcasting in Nigeria. Except that
> broadcasters refused to follow the content of their
> professional bible, such description would really have
> stuck in a land where legitimacy and not ignorance is
> a standard.
>
> As the NBC spins one of its numerous conferences which
> began in Minna yesterday, the question of how much of
> the broadcast Code you know does not only apply to the
> broadcast executives or managers but to all who have a
> stake in the system, including programme makers,
> religious groups and indeed, the generality of the
> Nigerian people.
>
> GANA AND JOURNALISTS' WELFARE
> The Anchor June 18, 2002 (Editorial)
> Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim, and the Minister
> of Information and National Orientation, Professor
> Jerry Gana, had cause recently to bemoan the fate of
> Nigerian journalists. That was at a three-day workshop
> on Media Laws held in Abuja. Anyim lamented the low
> take-home pay for journalists and called for a better
> deal for them. He revealed that the National Assembly
> was in the process of passing a bill on access to
> public information to allow for transparency and
> accountability in public service.
>
> Also decrying the poor remuneration of journalists,
> Prof. Gana threatened that the Federal Government
> would sanction media houses owing journalists salaries
> and allowances for months. He advised such
> organisations to pay up or fold up, saying that
> government would not hesitate to revoke the licences
> of such publishing or broadcasting companies, to save
> journalists from further exploitation. The minister
> further disclosed that licences recently granted to
> some broadcast organisations were based mainly on
> their ability to cater for the welfare of journalists
> adequately and to meet other operational costs.
>
> We share the concerns expressed by the two top
> government functionaries towards the plight of
> Nigerian journalists and also thank them for their
> sympathy. However, we wish to observe that poor or
> irregular payment of workers is not peculiar to media
> houses. There are other employers of labour who are
> equally in default. But this is not to say that we
> are not worried by this unfortunate development. A
> worker is entitled to his pay.
>
> Media houses are victims of the dwindling national
> economy and high inflationary trends to a degree that
> surpasses the experience of many other establishments.
> Most materials used in the publishing (or even
> broadcasting) industry have high foreign contents.
> These include newsprint, inks, films, plates and of
> course, the printing machines. The costs of their
> procurement have risen astronomically because eof the
> falling value of the naira. Even the local elements,
> like costs of transportation (for news hunting) and
> distribution of papers, have equally gone through the
> roof. What all these mean is that the cost of
> operations has put great strain on most media houses.
>
>
> Poor economy has also drastically reduced the two
> major sources of income for media organisations, sales
> and advertisements. High cost of production has
> inevitably skyrocketed the cover prices of journals
> and newspapers, so much so that only very few
> Nigerians can now afford to buy them regularly. In
> the same manner, advertisers have drastically scaled
> down their advert placements in the media. To worsen
> the situation, many advertising agencies default in
> remitting to media houses fees collected from their
> clients for adverts placed through them.
>
> It must be conceded that some publishers and media
> owners have very limited or myopic aims for going into
> publishing business. Once these ambitions are
> realised or if they fail to materialise, they loss
> interest in the enterprise and allow the journalists
> working for them to suffer. Most culpable of this
> practice are politicians who use their media organs to
> climb to national prominence and then allow them to
> die, leaving the workers in the cold.
>
> Ensuring regular and rewarding pay for journalists is
> not something to be achieved by applying government
> sledge-hammer as Prof. Gana is threatening. Afterall,
> even his ministry and parastatals under it do not pay
> their workers as and when due. If government is
> allowed to carry out the threat, there is no guarantee
> that it cannot hide under the cover of dealing with
> defaulting media houses to close down those that are
> not in its good books. Moreover, media organisations
> are business outfits registered with the Corporate
> Affairs Commission and, therefore, no government
> ministry has the right to close them down.
>
> Improvement of the welfare of newsmen is something to
> be left to the journalists themselves. The Nigerian
> guild of editors (NGE) and the Nigeria Union of
> Journalists (NUJ) should pick up the gauntlet. The
> onus is on them to do the fighting on behalf of their
> members. It is for them to tackle media houses which
> make so much money and yet pay their workers peanuts
> or irregularly. They also have the responsibility to
> ensure that media owners have good and workable
> conditions of service for their staff. Another issue
> they have to confront is the penchant for some media
> houses to sack their employees at will, and when there
> is justifiable excuse to do so, they should insist on
> such discharged workers getting their full
> entitlements. The professional bodies equally need to
> address the issue of proliferation of
> mini-associations within their midst, as experience
> has shown that these sub-unions sometimes engage in
> practices that do not uplift the profession.
>
> Over and above all these, the NGE and NUJ should
> endeavour to make their members uphold both
> professionalism and professional ethics. In
> situations where media owners appoint unqualified and
> inexperienced persons to sensitive editorial positions
> simply because these are their relations or friends,
> the two associations ought to call such employers to
> order. They should also organise regular retraining
> courses for journalists to update their standard of
> practice.
>
> Journalists themselves should develop a professional
> solidarity. There should be an espirit de corps among
> them, such that any media organisation which maltreats
> their colleagues or sacks them whimsically should be
> boycotted by other journalists. They should uphold
> their integrity and stop selling their services for
> a-penny.
>
> Nigerian publishers and media owners should crave for
> nichemanship. There is no need for every media owner
> to aim at "going national" and in the process,
> over-stretch his resources. Rather than rushing to
> Lagos to establish, or dissipating financial energy
> trying to cover the entire country, media owners can
> target particular areas or audience and serve them
> effectively. By so doing, they secure reliable
> markets and loyal readership.
>
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