Symbolism with Simbo Olorunfemi
Email: simboor@yahoo.com Twitter: @simboolorunfemi
A day after the National Security Adviser took to London, the February sun in pocket, to push for a postponement of the forthcoming elections, one had expected that the media will latch onto the development and make a feast of it on its breakfast table. Who could have predicted that some of our friends who had made a meal of issues of little or no substance would be offering us a different menu? Who could have foreseen that the sun would be ferried into the hinterland and we will all wake up to find our friends at the courtyard of another Government House? Going Afghanistan, when most needed, is a tragedy that has increasingly become of our media.
But the tragedy is not simply that of TV breakfast shows relocating into every available bedroom, once the price is right. It is that of the Nigerian media reduced to hobbling around on crutches, eking desperately for survival. The tragedy is that the sun set for a financially-robust media, long ago. The tragedy is that of the media largely under-capitalised, with a business model fashioned around the begging bowl. With that, news has become monetised. There are no scruples, any longer, about where the sun should rise or set.
In fact, shortly after the sun was tucked into bed in Akure by that TV station, another one swiftly rose from the Eagle Square in Abuja. So, one sun morphs into another, a live TV coverage pushes another off the airwaves, at the instance of many millions of Naira.
But didn’t I allude to a financially malnourished media? I contradict myself. How do I talk of a media hobbling on crutches, yet with its basket filled to the brim with millions of Naira? Truth is, the media, for the most part runs on shoe-string budget, but increasingly, a few TV stations have been smiling to different places, making a kill from live transmission of events. Since those in power are obsessed with live transmission of every activity from their bedrooms, it is no secret that a few of the TV stations have found a way to take advantage of that. The tragedy is that even as that segment of the media has begun to thrive, it has found it difficult to shake off its begging-bowl mentality.
That can only be the reason why TV stations will step down its own flagship programmes for the sake of live transmissions from the boy’s quarters of those in power. TV stations are no longer content with allocating every other 30 minutes for state governors to broadcast their uncommon transformation to an audience far away from their domain. They are not content with live transmission of all manner of nauseating activities, as the rich and powerful celebrate the banal and routine. They must hijack already established programmes (such as Sunrise Daily on Channels TV) and relocate the anchors into the bedrooms of governors to massage their bloated egos. They must pander to the whims of men in power who insist on the sun rising from their green rooms, at enormous cost to the state they were ‘selected’ to govern.
With the beggar’s bowl as companion, the media finds it difficult to tell the good from the bad. The faculty of reason gets compromised. It becomes easy to rationalise the decision to accept a wrap-around advert death-wish, even if it ruffles moral and regulatory feathers. It becomes acceptable to broadcast falsehood and incite the populace, as long as the millions have been paid. So again, it becomes all about stomach infrastructure, even for the media.
But what has become of developmental journalism? What has become of the code of ethics? What has become of the role of the media in serving as a filter mechanism? Didn’t someone say something about the media being agenda-setters? What agenda can the media set with this cash and carry mentality?
Everyone is blaming the politicians for not dwelling on issues. How will they take on issues when the media is itself obsessed with sensation and inanities, often staying on the banal, leaving the important unattended to? How would issues dominate when the media is daily awash with inanities? Same set of analysts go round the TV stations in a careful choreography advance pre-conceived agenda and muddy the pool. Lines have become permanently blurred between what is news and what has been paid for. Partisans masquerade as analysts, with no disclaimer made, in the erroneous belief that the audience will be fooled. How do issues come to the top when the foundation has been compromised by the media?
The traditional media might be trucking in money now on the back of all the shenanigans, but it is only digging its own grave. Who will continue to switch on TV to simply watch live broadcasts from the backyard of the Government House? The threat to the traditional media in Nigeria is not coming only from the ubiquitous nature of modern technology. It is digging the grave for itself by disregarding the ethics and standards that govern the practice globally. The sun might be rising from one Government House today and setting in Aso Rock, how long will that last, if the audience is lost to competing media?
But again, I contradict myself. Who says those who have paid for these live transmissions are not simply content to watch themselves and turn the TV into personal mirrors? Who says the whole essence of buying off the airtime is not meant to take ‘Focus Nigeria’ off air for us to watch the government tell us how it has created unemployment? Who says the whole essence of it all is to have us switch off the polity and focus on religion, alcohol, sports and gambling? Perhaps, those who relocated the sun knew what it was all about anyway. What can be better than having the sun rise, right in your own bedroom, on your own terms?
