Adequate citizens’ information essential for credible elections – Prof. Oso

Adequate citizens’ information essential for credible elections – Prof. Oso

With the 2015 general elections beckoning, the challenge of fair coverage for political parties and candidates has started engaging the attention of journalists, media experts and media development specialists. A cross section of these concerned stakeholders recently gathered at the conference hall of the International Press Centre (IPC) in Lagos for a tweet-a-thon which discussed

L-R: Mr. Lanre Arogundade, Director, IPC, Prof. Lai Oso, Dean, School of Communication, LASU, Mr. Habib Haruna, Sunday Editor, Daily Independent newspaper.

L-R: Mr. Lanre Arogundade, Director, IPC, Prof. Lai Oso, Dean, School of Communication, LASU, Mr. Habib Haruna, Sunday Editor, Daily Independent newspaper.

With the 2015 general elections beckoning, the challenge of fair coverage for political parties and candidates has started engaging the attention of journalists, media experts and media development specialists.

A cross section of these concerned stakeholders recently gathered at the conference hall of the International Press Centre (IPC) in Lagos for a tweet-a-thon which discussed “2015 Election; Addressing fair and equitable media access for political parties and candidates.

Director of IPC, Lanre Arogundade explained that the tweet-a-thon was a form of media roundtable designed to enlist the wide participation of media stakeholders via twitter and other forms of social media networks in discussions on how the media could be catalysts of credible and conflict free elections. The exercise is supported by the UNDP DGDIII and its partners including the EU as part of a broader project on ‘Media Capacity Building, Mentoring and Monitoring for Conflict-Sensitive, Public-Issue and ICT-Driven Reporting of 2015 Elections’.

As lead Speaker, Prof. Lai Oso, Media Scholar and Dean of Lagos State University’s School of Communications, argued that because media practitioners are critical agents in the electoral process, journalists should accord deserved respect to the right of access by parties and candidates as “doing this can only make electoral processes in general and elections in particular credible”.

Prof. Oso said elections offer the electorate the opportunity to choose among competing parties and candidates, hence the media should provide such information that would enable them make informed decisions: “For election to be meaningful the electorate must be informed and educated and the mass media offer the channels for political parties and candidates to reach the public with their messages”.

According to him Editors and Reporters need to reckon with the fact that citizens rely mainly on the mass media for credible and reliable information which go a long way to shape and influence the decisions and opinions; set agenda for the public to discuss and ultimately influence the public to take a predetermined action. He therefore enjoined journalists to be fair and unbiased in passing information and not to take sides in disseminating information as it can influence the public to take negative decision.

Prof. Oso further stressed: “Our understanding of fair and equitable media access must be based on the social and political context within which the media operate. Journalists must always be concerned with the overall health of our democracy and the society at large and ethical consideration must be paramount”, he noted.

But according to the University don, the task of ensuring access does not lie with journalist alone, as politicians also have a role to play. He defined the role: “Political aspirants and parties should also see the media as key to the elections and thus organize newsworthy events that media can report, as well as make themselves easy to reach by journalists and be willing, eager and able to speak to the media on issues”. He however noted that with the growth of ICTs, parties and political candidates can now bypass the conventional media by employing the social media to reach the public directly: “With the social media, the primacy and power of the traditional media have been eroded; however, the challenge is about the class of people being reached as most people who are on the internet may not be the people who will vote”.

But Prof. Oso said that the entire debate over equitable access should be situated within the context of obvious challenges such as unequal strength and resource of the political parties as well as ownership interest. His argument was that bigger and richer parties tended to enjoy more media patronage compared with smaller ones while journalists who work with news mediums owned by politicians are often unable to be as objective as they might wish to be.

Reacting to these issues Mr. Arogundade said it is precisely because some political parties have prior advantage that the media should strive to give space and time to all without discrimination or prejudice on perceived size and influence, if only for them to publish information on their programs and manifestoes.

Arogundade explained that it is also obligatory because “by granting equitable access to parties and candidates for campaigns, public outreach and other electoral purposes, the media would be complying with the requirements of relevant electoral regulatory frameworks”.

The frameworks Arogundade alluded to include the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended), the revised edition of the National Broadcasting Code and the new Code of Ethics of Journalists in Nigeria, all of which enjoin the media to give equitable access to parties and candidates in elections.

Contributing to the discourse, Mr. Habib Haruna, Sunday Editor, Daily Independent newspaper noted that although it might be always difficult for the media to be fair and give such equitable access, media practitioners should nonetheless bear in mind that they owe some responsibility to the larger society and should have their interest at heart when reporting any political event. He added that when elections are covered equitably and fairly, it makes it issue-based and helps the electorate to decide well”.

Haruna described the tweet-a-thon as timely giving the importance of the social media in sensitizing the public. He noted that on the account of the social media “the world is no longer a global village but a global neighborhood”.

Up to twenty male and female journalists from the print and broadcast media attended the tweet-a-thon,which through the hash-tag #Media4Elections, generated 256 tweets and reached 3,808 accounts.

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