Broadcasters Were Reckless In Their Coverage Of The End SARS Protest – Prof. Armstrong Idachaba

The National Broadcasting Corporation’s acting Director General, Prof. Armstrong Idachaba has chastised media houses and broadcasters over their coverage of the just ended End SARS protest.

The NBC, sometime ago imposed a fine of N3 million on media houses who covered the end SARS protest including Arise News and a host of other media houses.

READ ALSO: Governor Rotimi Akeredolu Defends Decision To Freeze Accounts Of EndSARS Protesters

Speaking to Arise News, the acting Director General of the corporation explained why they had to fine the media houses for their reportage.

READ ALSO: OAP, Toke Makinwa Recounts Her First Broken Heart Story

He noted that most of the media houses were reckless in their coverage of the protest. He also accused them of using unverified videos on social media to report about the protest.

Below is an excerpt from the interview.

“We had to impose a sanction because we found out that in the coverage of the #EndSARS campaign that many broadcasters began to be reckless in the coverage of the crisis.

At the beginning of the crisis, there was fairness and reasonable professionalism. All shades to the issue were given the opportunity to present their positions. The broadcasters followed the agitators as they went on their protest which at the initial stage was peaceful. When government responded and preferred solutions and answers to the demands of the protesters, the broadcasters also gave the government view.

What we monitored was a dramatic turnaround the moment the protest became violent. Rather than come up with facts of the issues, we began to see deliberate distortions, manipulated storylines, face infusions and intrusions into the narrative in the graphic presentations that rather than help to reduce the situation, more or less aggravated it.

We saw spurious claims, misrepresentation of facts, and these are clear violations of the provisions of the broadcasting code.

We began to wonder whether broadcasters have abdicated their ethical requirements.

For point of clarity, Section 5.6.2 of the broadcast code says the broadcaster shall approach with restraint the use of materials from user-generated sources and that was the problem. User-generated sources. Broadcasters abdicated their own rule of relying on their own reporters.

Many of you had reporters at many of those locations but the stories you churned out, the visuals you churned out emanated from other user-generated sources and these sources were not corroborated, authenticated, and not verified. They were largely misleading.”

Source: AfricaCelebrities.Com