Mr. Lanre Arogundade is so many things woven into one. A man passionate about issues concerning the Nigerian media, he is a journalist of outstanding status, an author, a human rights activist and at a time a politician among other things. Noted for his penchant for doing battle with anything that may want to obstruct the ease of doing media business in its best form, Arogundade is also a trainer of media practitioners. With the International Press Centre, IPC, which he founded as a useful tool, he has championed the cause of ensuring press freedom in Nigeria and beyond, in addition to helping shape for the better, the future of media practitioners.
In this interview with SAKIBU OLOKOJOBI, the Director of IPC speaks on a number of issues relating to the media in Nigeria and how best to loosen the grips of the problems threatening to snuff life out of it. Excerpts:
Can you give an insight into what informed the birth of IPC and how its activities have been over the years?
International Press Centre is the product of what we can call the needs assessment of the Nigerian media towards the end of military rule in the country and towards the beginning of the return to civil rule in Nigeria. This assessment was done by a group of international media and freedom organisations with the assistance of some Nigerian organisations. Precisely, these were the International Association of Journalists, the Reporters Without Borders, the West African Journalists Association, as well as Article 19. These four organisations had been working in the areas of press freedom and so on. So, when they felt that there was a likelihood that Nigeria will return to civil rule, they came together and said that there was the need to have a programme of assistance for the Nigerian media. They were able to have the support of the Media Rights Agenda, Journalists for Democratic Rights, as well the Independent Journalism Centre as local partners. Invariably, they put together what was called the media for democracy project which had a number of components, including the reform of media laws, the establishment of a resource centre for journalists to meet and discuss, and had dialogue around the role of the media in a democratic set up. The support for that came from the European Union. So, in 1999, IPC was established for these basic objectives.
When we started actually, apart from providing or facilitating dialogue, discussions, review of Press Council decree, and other things, we also, through the resources we had, did some basic things. Those were the early days of the internet. You may be surprised that one of the things we were doing then was to help journalists open e-mail addresses. EU gave us a phone line with internet connection. So, journalists will come, fill a form, we will create e-mail for them and give them passwords. And sometimes, we even checked their mails for them. So, those were in the early days.
And of course, because the International Federation of Journalists was involved in our establishment, we were also carrying out a number of activities around trade union rights of journalists, especially female journalists. At that early stage we also became part of the Freedom of Information Coalition, and we were one of the leading organisations in the campaign and advocacy for the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act.
However, the support from the European Union lasted for 18 months. Then, there was the question of what would become of IPC after that initial period. Should it just cease to exist after fulfilling that basic mandate or do we have other things that we need to contribute. We felt that IPC could play a role in building the capacity of journalists and of course, it needed to be registered. So, in 2001, International Press Centre was formally registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission as a not-for-profit organisation with a wider mandate of building the capacity of the media to engage with development and democracy, facilitating dialogue on the broader issue of the media in a democracy, involvement in the reform of various laws that touch on press freedom and freedom of expression. So, that has been our mandate.
So, how has its activities been over the years?
Of course, over the years, we also have to recognise the fact that the media is changing. So, when you look at what we are doing now compared to what we were doing then, you will see some difference. We have developed expertise. Our capacity development initiatives have expanded – investigative journalism, election reporting (where we can say we are an authority, because we do this in every election year circle). We train journalists, publish media resource books, and so on and so forth.
Looking back, we have published many media resource books, trained a number of journalists. We think that our contributions to some extent have helped the media in Nigeria.
Haven practised as a reporter in the past, how would you compare reporting in the past to the present situation?
I would say that it is a mixed bag. What the media had in those days… – I was in the National Concord, I was in Vanguard. I worked in the newsroom between 1988 and 1999 when IPC was established. In the newsroom then, there was serious gate-keeping. A reporter couldn’t just write anything; it had to be subjected to critical assessment on the part some gate-keepers in the newsroom. I would recall that when I joined the Concord as Chief Correspondent, I was based in the newsroom. My job specification was to assist the Assistant News Editor, Deputy News Editor and the News Editor in going through stories that were coming from state correspondents. But we discovered then that because most of them covered the state governors, when stories came, they were usually in hyperbolic terms, praising what the governors did. Something like – there was great welcome for the governor who was going round. And in the last paragraph, you will find something like, “However, some community members carried placards, complaining that their boreholes were not working.” To us, what was put in the last paragraph was the story. We will bring that one out and re-write.
So, there was that re-write process. And when you are not sure of some facts, or some things you had not heard of, you would call the correspondent: Did this happen? How did you get this information? For me, that is the difference there. One would therefore tend to say that in that time, stories that were published were more rigorously and professionally treated. If we compare that to what happens today, with the advent of the internet, and the fact that we now operate in the digital space, the element of quality control has been removed. I have talked about the system in Concord. In Guardian they had the sub-editors who would do the gate-keeping. They would look at it, find out if there were enough backgrounds and so on. By the time you have the stories published, you would have got a comprehensive background so that someone reading the stories will really know where the issues were coming from. The same thing with other newspapers, including The Punch.
One of my mentors is Mr. Tokunbo Oloruntola; he is an award-winning reporter in The Punch; also Niran Malaolu. When you said you had a story, you must have had a story. It was a competition of exclusives.
In the Concord, we used to have two types of editorial conferences – one in the morning when all the line editors and news editor will present what they had, presenting the possible lead for the day. The others would contribute and questions would be asked: Are you thinking of this or that angle? So, by evening, the stories would have come in and there would be the second editorial conference where we would look at the lead stories and the headlines. This time around the news editor would have cast the headlines. They would look at the headlines, look at the news stories. I think that kind of gate-keeping seems to be missing in contemporary journalism practice.
Why do you say that and what would you say is responsible?
Technology. News have become much more spontaneous. That time, what we called exclusives that you hold jealously, is no longer so. It is already there in the social media. Social media now breaks stories. Stories are broken on Facebook, Twitter. And you have record of some great stories that first got to the news media on Twitter. Not even where you have media conglomerate that have it all like CNN and so on. Some years back, there was this plane that crashed into the river. That story came up via Twitter or Facebook. So, many developments around the world are like that. Journalism these days tend to be reactive. We react to what is already there.
That is particularly so about the conventional newspapers.
Yes, I’m talking about the conventional newspapers; even the online newspapers too. That they are online newspapers does not mean that they are online social media. I know that you run FrontPage which is an online newspaper. But you would also agree with me that some things, before you have them on FrontPage are already out there on Twitter, on Whatsapp, on Facebook or whatever. So, we tend to react to these. That is one part of it. The second part is the need to be there 24-7. The conventional media, whether radio, television, newspapers and so on, are all online. When things happen, you have to put it out there. So, if as we are having this interview now, there is a development at the State House, like President Buhari removes somebody or whatever, before we conclude this interview, it is already out there. Because of that, newspapers don’t want to be left out. So, a reporter sends his report to the online editor. Because of this, the kind of gate-keeping we used to have is no longer there. I feel that this is why we have some of the recent problems like the Vanguard story on Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, for example. May be when that story came, the online editor felt that was a big story, it affected the vice president, and they needed to be there online. He put it online without some gate-keeping. I can feel that the challenge of journalism today is how we can integrate that traditional gate-keeping to modern journalism practice in such a way that we still have some element of control. It is not every story today, if we have to go through the process described that will pass. Now, with that fact at the back of our mind, we then need to pay greater attention to the building of the professional capacity of journalists. We need to train and retrain, especially journalists that work in the online environment for them to understand that even though you need to be there, there is nothing stopping you from asking questions. Yes, where the facts are not there, you can break the story and say, so so and so have not independently confirmed the story, but we will update you as events unfold. That gives you the opportunity to do normal journalism by calling press secretaries of state governors or the president. It could even be the special adviser or whoever that you will call. Or if it is the corporate world, we all have contacts. Some of our colleagues work in the corporate affairs departments of banks and so on. That is the way we can help to put credible stories out there. One of the things that journalism is about today is correcting false information. It is about ensuring that we do not allow disinformation or mis-information to rule the media space.
You would agree with me that the coming of online journalism has posed a serious challenge to the conventional newspapers in terms of being beaten to some stories. What they used to hold on to till the next day are now published today. How best do you think the conventional newspapers can handle such a situation?
I think they need to invest more in investigative reporting. Investigative reporting is not spontaneous. The pockets of reports and rumours we have on social media and so on, normally, should form basis for normal thorough investigations so that when we do these investigations and start publishing the outcome, in series – like the kind of thing Soyombo is doing on the police system and so on – that would really help to separate the wheat from the chaff. That would make all to know that serious journalism still exists out there.
The other one is also to ensure that even though we operate in the online environment, we are still professional journalists. We are still bound by ethical and professional standards. The fact that you are in an online environment does not mean you need to compromise those standards. Constantly, we need to remind ourselves that there are some guidelines. I expect any journalist, whether you are online or not online, to know that there is what we call Libel. And how do you get round it? The basics remain the same. And I keep saying it, fact-checking journalism is still the same thing as what we were doing in the newsroom under the guise of gate-keeping. It was only in terms of internal fact checking based on stories that came at the time. But these days, we have to do more of external fact checking because things are just put out in the social media space that could have effect on the public; sometimes, things that could lead to conflict. That scope has expanded. Whether you call it fact checking or whatever, the fundamental of good journalism is discipline of verification; discipline of thinking of the other side; knowing that every issue or event has diverse sides – minimum of two sides. It is on us to understand that if somebody alleges, that person needs to provide evidence to prove. And even where you have evidence, you need to have the other side so that when you are presenting your stories, the readers can have an informed opinion. There are times when you may not be able to get the other side immediately, but there must be quick follow up. That is why we say there should be no excuse. When I train journalists, I tell them that in our days, it was common to end stories with “All efforts to get the other side of the story from so so and so proved abortive.” Abortive was commonly used then because we came from a military era. In those days, when coups failed, the military would come on air and say “The coup planned by so so and so has proved abortive.” That word went into the media. But then, we are talking of a period when we went for interviews with midget recorders and notebooks. Infact, some didn’t have recorders at the time because it was a luxury at a stage in the development of this profession. You therefore record with your brain, your mind, your pen and still have to write your story.
But now, we have so many channels of reaching to people in authority. They have social media handles, special assistants; those assistants have social media like Facebook and others. Even when you are unable to get the other side, your story must show ample evidence of how far you have gone in getting the other side rather than just putting it there for convenience sake. I think in the digital age, all efforts cannot and should not prove abortive.
Many newspapers in the country have died and even the ones existing find it hard to pay their staff and sustain production. Something crucial appears to be wrong. What, in your view, is responsible for these developments?
Well, I still feel we need a major study, investigation and possibly, a kind of roundtable conference to look at the problems with the Nigerian media. Like you rightly said, something must be wrong. If newspapers were circulating a million copies or half of that depending on the titles… we are not talking about 50 or 40 years ago. Infact, we are talking of a maximum period of 20 or 25 years ago – the peak of the military rule. Weekend Concord, Sunday Concord, Daily Time, The Punch, were having 800,000; 500,000, over a million separately, depending on the issues. For all these newspapers in Nigeria to be talking of not more than 250,000, in a country of 200 million people, I think something must be seriously wrong. We can identify some of the factors as economic factors, we can also talk about, may be, the environment. But beyond that is also the fact that we need to ask ourselves the question: Why is a student not able to buy newspapers. In our days as students, we were buying newspapers. Why are people not motivated to buy newspapers. I feel that there is a level of lack of public trust in the media that is affecting the sale of the newspapers. Part of it can be explained because people can also go online and read newspapers. They don’t have to buy. We can then begin to ask ourselves: If the internet or the social media is the problem with newspapers in Nigeria, why is it not the problem of newspapers in Kenya? In Kenya, there is also a high rate of internet penetration.
I went to Kenya two years ago and I engaged in discussion with a Mass Communication lecturer in one of the universities. I was stunned that newspapers in Kenya still circulate 300,000 daily. Well produced newspapers with pockets of adverts. Like I said, the internet in Kenya is also well used. So, we need to have studies. I feel that this is something that the organsiations that represent the media like the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria and Nigerian Guild of Editors should realise that this is a venture worth engaging in. We are not just talking about Europe, we are talking about Africa; we are talking about South Africa; we are talking about Kenya and even Ghana. Can we look at what probably they are doing well that we are probably not doing right so that we just don’t come to the conclusion that it is simply because of this or that that the newspapers are not doing well. I believe that if we take journalism more seriously, things might begin to change.
Like I said, we need to do a study, do a critical assessment of the media because it’s scary; it is like a vanishing species and I don’t think it is useful for development if our newspaper just continue to collapse like that.
The preponderance of online newspapers is partly believed to be a product of the problems confronting the conventional newspapers. How would you assess the advent of the online news media?
I think it is a very welcome development. One of the reasons is also the fact that welfare is not taken seriously, even by newspapers that are relatively doing well. At least, we do know that during election period, a lot of income, a lot of advertisement come into the media, but hardly are these ploughed back, hardly are these invested in the welfare of journalists. Not just in the newspapers, you see it in some private radio and television stations. You see some of them being owed salaries. So, when this happens, when you know you are good, you ask yourself why you should continue to stay in a newspaper that does not pay you. You decide to go online and establish your own newspaper. So, it is partly a response to that.
It is something we need to embrace. For us, we do know that there are barriers against investigative journalism – barrier of ownership interest; political, business interest. When you want to do your job the way it should be done, you feel the barriers. But if you have your own independent online newspaper, it allows you to practise the profession according to the dictates of your conscience, and I feel that that is one of the things affecting that. For me, it is quite welcome. You know I asked before this interview that isn’t there a proliferation, but you said the market will separate the wheat from the chaff. Sometimes, as journalists, we must understand that there is nothing wrong in partnerships. Even when you are doing investigative journalism, sometimes, you have to do it in groups. You can’t do it alone. So, let’s say your focus is investigative journalism and there is another too with a focus on investigative journalism. Rather than doing it separately, why would you not come together. Even for the traditional media, this is one of the suggestions made in the past that there could be areas of cooperation. One of the issues in Nigeria is that every newspaper has its printing press. But if the newspapers have a modern printing press, that would suffice. I don’t know whether it still happens; in the UK, the newspapers that circulate million copies are all printed in one place. You are just allocated time. This is possible because within a period of 30 minutes or so, they have rolled out your million copies. I would not want us to overlook this, no matter how much we blame ourselves, that quite frankly, the kind of economy we have is really not in the interest of the media.
There are no concessions at all granted the media. I recall the days we were talking about Oku Iboku paper mill and Iwopin paper mill to help the media. It is as if the government continues to see the media as not being part of governance. We are part of governance. Look at elections; it is not every voter education that the media carries out that are paid for. These are matter of public service. To that extent, the media deserves economic concessions in terms of waivers on our inputs like newsprint and others that we use. We should be categorised as having educational inputs that require waiver. There is nothing absolutely wrong with a fund being set up, may be through an act of the National Assembly for the media to carry out its civic and education activities during elections. There is nothing wrong with that. I don’t want us to over look that.
But for those of us who have gone online to publish – online newspapers, online radio etc – I would say that what would also determine our survival is our competitiveness – Our competitiveness in terms of professionalism, in terms of the investigations we do. That is what will drive the traffic towards us. Being online is not an escape from complying with the basic standards of good journalism.
How free would you say the press is in Nigeria today. I am asking this question against the backdrop of some developments under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Quite frankly, I wouldn’t say that the press is free in Nigeria today. I think the media is becoming an endangered species. The civic space is shrinking. Citizens’ rights are being violated with impunity. The body language that we have now suggests tolerance to impunity and violation of human rights; we are seeing things that we should not be seeing in a democratic set up. A journalist criticizes a governor or alleges that a governor has been involved in acts of corruption, that governor, like Yemi Osinbajo, can waive his immunity and go to court or state his own side of the story and wait till his tenure expires and go to court to sue for libel. But instead of doing that, you get this journalist arrested; you are not talking about the charge of corruption, but that the journalist is a terrorist. Terrorism has now become the sword of Damocles hanging on the head of the journalist. We talk about Abba Jalingo and Jones Abiri. So, any journalist now trying to do investigative journalism can be accused… In fact in the case of Abba Jalingo, the governor said that he wanted to overthrow the government of Cross River. I just don’t know how this is possible.
Amnesty International just released a report that in nine months this year, about 19 journalists, were arrested or harassed by security agencies. Here, we constantly monitor attacks on journalists. We discover that every now and then, the police, the soldiers and political thugs are responsible for the attacks on journalists. So, we cannot say that we are that free. We are free to the extent that nobody says you should not write or report what you want, but we are not free to the extent that you are being punished for daring to ask questions about public interest. Look at the case Abba Jalingo; the state government has not come out to say these allegations are false. Like I said, state your own side. Then we would have been saying, “Oh, that story should not have been published.” When the Vanguard incident occurred, we all came to the conclusion that the story itself even if it had some element of truth did not meet the basic elements of good journalism in terms of getting the other side, cross checking the facts and so on and so forth. We are talking about a journalist raising a question of public interest. If you compare this period with previous period when we returned to democracy in 1999, I think it is the worst period for press freedom in Nigeria.
*Concluding part of this interview will be published on Wednesday.
