Oh dear! Just after making my last
post - Journalist WhoAccused T.B Joshua Of
Bribe Speaks At Length About It someone was fast to send
me a link and says Ladun have
you seen this? I think this is the reason why journalists accept bribes. Funny,
this piece was also written by a journalist, and he detailed why Nigerian
journalists must accept bribes and why they should continue to do so till
things get better. Enjoy…
People have been asking me, “Simon ,
were you at that press conference on 14 September where Prophet T.B. Joshua
allegedly gave N50,000 to journalists to write a positive story on the building
collapse that killed many people?”, my answer is always the same.
The truth is this, as long as
journalists in Nigeria are not paid for months or are given irregular crummy salaries,
as long as they are not insured, as long as publishers pocket all the corrupt
money they get in the forms of adverts or special reports from corrupt
politicians, and as long as Nigerians refuse to spend their money on
newspapers, which push publishers to solicit money from politicians who have
pocketed everything, many journalists will continue to accept gifts, bribes or
whatever you call it.
I understand that foreign
journalists at the event and a Nigerian journalist allegedly rejected the
money. I am happy they allegedly did and that’s where the profession should be.
That’s the ideal we all want. But that’s not where we are.
Most journalists in Nigeria have no
insurance. Many newspapers in Nigeria have not paid their reporters for months,
some even a year, including those newspapers that are even getting those
corrupt advert money from government officials.
A CNN, Reuters, Associated Press or
BBC journalist will surely die if he was not paid for one year, had no
insurance, no house to live in, and no friend to support him.
And many former journalists who are
now successful and even the society at large, are very wicked. They see a
journalist who is striving to stand out, who wants to be objective and unbiased,
they watch him as life challenges crush him to death. No car, no house, no
savings, nothing to show for 20 years of work. And when such a journalist
accepts a gift, the same society says, look at him, he’s corrupt. He’s biased.
He’s unethical.
But the same society screaming does
not buy newspapers, they prefer to spend all their money on drinks, cigarettes,
clothes, bags and cars but demand and expect higher standards from the media.
So I am sorry to say it won’t happen.
The society is hypocritical and the
media industry is sick. But until there’s a shift, nothing will change.
You can say these are just excuses.
You may even add that the media should be our conscience, and only truth is
acceptable. You will be passing a superficial judgement, because you cannot
just should look at corruption in the media without understanding why the rot
is so deep and the change so hard.
You must understand that it is the product
of a failed society. A corrupt government, a corrupt judiciary, a corrupt police
force, a corrupt army, a corrupt civil society, a corrupt banking and financial
system, a corrupt educational system, a corrupt political system, in summary,
it is the product of a failed country that does nothing when journalists are
not paid for months or are left to wallow in poverty after serving their
nations for 20 years.
I used to know a journalist who
passed on after working for his company for many years in Lagos, and his wife
was given only one month salary to take care of herself and their kids. I
guess, this, certainly, is not the future we all envisaged after graduating
with a First Class at the University.
My rambling is getting too long. Let
me summarise.
The journalist who leaked the
alleged bribery to the public claimed that he did so because journalists were
too soft on Prophet T.B. Joshua and were not reporting the truth.
Hear him: “I observed that Nigerian
media were being too gentle on TB Joshua despite the glaring irregularities
surrounding the collapse. I read more reports about the “hovering craft” and
how Boko Haram could have sabotaged the building.
“Very little was reported about the
structural defects of the building. Not much was written about the fact that
the building originally had 2 floors and was being illegally refurbished with 4
additional floors when it collapsed. We didn’t come hard on the Synagogue
Church goons who attacked first responders. We didn’t highlight the fact that
many of those that perished could have been saved if NEMA officials weren’t
barred from the site for almost three days! We didn’t make an issue of the fact
that our colleagues who had gone to report the collapsed building were molested
on Saturday.”
Of course, you all know that these
are lies. What he’s saying is not factual. Or maybe he did not read reporting
of the building collapse enough.
On 15 September, the day after the
alleged bribe was given to journalists, P.M.NEWS published this editorial:
http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/09/15/the-synagogue-tragedy/ . You can read
it yourself and let me know if it looked like they were being soft on T.B.
Joshua or hiding the facts.
The 20-year old newspaper said in
that editorial: “Perhaps most of the dead victims would have been rescued alive
if the church staff and people perceived as thugs did not prevent officials of
the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, from carrying out rescue
operations immediately the building crumbled.
Lagos State Governor, Babatunde
Fashola, had to intervene by visitting the scene of the disaster and ordering
the church staff to leave the site before rescue work could start in
earnest.”
The newspaper concluded it editorial
by saying: “We must go beyond speculation to serious investigation to unravel
the facts and prevent future tragedies of this magnitude. Those who are found
wanting should be made to face the full wrath of the law.”
Does that look like a newspaper
trying to protect T.B. Joshua or that did not care about the dead?
Of course not.
But that was not all. the same day,
the cover story of P.M.NEWS in Lagos read: “Boko Haram Attack: Nigerians Blast
T.B. Joshua”.
The lead or the first paragraph of
that story read: “Nigerians have blasted Prophet T.B. Joshua of the Synagogue
Church of All Nations for claiming that Boko Islamist sect might have brought
down a six-storey building in his church that has killed more than 40 people.”
That front page story was published
on 15 September. Does it look like people who were buying the story of a jet
hovering over the building before it came down?
These examples were just from
P.M.NEWS. It was the same thing for The Punch, The Nation, Vanguard, The Sun,
ThisDay, Tribune, The New Telegraph, TheNews Magazine, and even TVC and
Channels TV, as well as other television and radio stations.
So it is not factual to say that
Nigerian journalists were being soft on T.B. Joshua or were hiding the facts.
It is simply a lie.
If Nigerian journalists collected
the money, they did so because of a sick industry, a failed state and the
reasons I mentioned above. But the money certainly did not change the facts.
And we all knew the facts even before the audio was leaked last week.
One thing I can say is that until
investigation is conducted and concluded, no one can claim to know exactly what
led to the building collapse. It will just be ranting, and rambling that lead
to semantic noise but nothing evidential or concrete.
I can say more, and go on and on,
but for now, it’s time to mourn the dead. May their souls rest in peace.
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