Of balanced reportage and all that, by Tijjani Isa

“…whereas her victims can enjoy the luxury of medical care or the serenity of a morgue at a Catholic hospital in Kaduna, the dead of the Fulani settlements were not that fortunate. Their cries were not heard for miles when their attackers hacked them to death.This is where the TVC failed my integrity test.”

Our media, the electronic specifically, need to do much, much better than they are doing already in respect of balanced reportage.

I just watched an interview with a lady who claims to speak for the middle belt forum. The lady by the name Ndi Kato alleged that 120 people were killed in Sanga, Kaduna State, and that leaders were being “picked up” and detained by security agencies for speaking out against “unceasing killings in southern Kaduna”.

That call is novel and should be supported by all meaning and peace loving Nigerians. Kaduna State has seen enough of this monstrosities.

My quarrel is not so much with the lady’s twisted logic when she claimed her community leadership can point to their every dead in this latest orgy of violence. Whereas, she implies, the government is unable to show “one corpse” of victims alleged to have been killed in Fulani settlements a couple of months ago.

The way she appeared in the interview I doubt if she’s well briefed on what happened at the settlements and the government position on the issue.

If she were adequately informed then, it appears she was reading a well scripted tissue of lies and crafty attempt to distort the facts surrounding those ugly incidences.

There was no need to compare or contrast, which incidentally was what she attempted to do. Every life lost matters.

First of all, whereas her victims can enjoy the luxury of medical care or the serenity of a morgue at a Catholic hospital in Kaduna, the dead of the Fulani settlements were not that fortunate. Their cries were not heard for miles when their attackers hacked them to death.

This is where the TVC failed my integrity test.
I would have thought it proper if the editors had taken the trouble to ask for another view from the other side. In the alternative, delay the report until the woman’s claims were verifiable.

My reason of course is that she tried to knit the unfortunate death of Agwan Adara, and the detention of a politician whose campaign cry precipitated the murder at the Fulani settlements.

The unfortunate death of Agwan Adara is well documented to have happened in the hands of kidnappers. Her so called claims that local “leadership is being silenced” on account of these two incidences is sad as it is in bad taste.

In the practice of journalism this claim should ring alarm bells that someone is treading on dangerous and divisive ground. But not to our editors; a scoop is a scoop, and we must be first out with it.

A scoop isn’t everything and it shouldn’t especially when it can create more insecurity and possible deaths and injury.

Sometimes one is forced to ask pertinent questions: whether the one-sided stories coming from our newsrooms are deliberate or for lack of enough manpower to man all the beats?

Or is the National Broadcasting Commission up to the task; adequately monitoring these newsrooms?
It is sad to note that we are yet to learn how others do it; all sides to the story!!

*Tijjani Isa, a Journalist and Media Consultant, lives in Kaduna.