Nigerian Journalists Need To Focus On Peace Reporting – Workshop Participants
BY ADEYEMI AKANJI, BAUCHI – Participants at “A-3-Day Virtual Training” organized by the United States Embassy in Nigeria have urged media practitioners in Nigeria to be more of peace advocates and promoters through their reportage of events especially those that can lead to violence.
The stakeholders at the training workshop which took place in Bauchi, agreed that even though the media in Nigeria cannot completely shift away from the traditional journalism practice owing to the coverage of other events, they should however give more room and promote peace journalism.
These were part of the resolutions contained in a communique issued at the end of the workshop in which participants resolved that while reporting a crisis situation, media practitioners should carefully choose the language they use in order to avoid inflammatory language and sensationalism.
The Communiqué which was signed by Ishola Michael, Chairman, communique Drafting Committee, Secretary, Rauf Oyewole and Haruna Mohammad, member, specifically appealed to Journalists to avoid toxic narrative which include Inflammatory, sensational language and story which tilts towards profiling a tribe, group, political party, ethnic, region among others which must be treated professionally.
The communique further states; “Media practitioners should always take the position of reconciliation while stories of violence, protest, agitation and others should be reported with context while digging out the cause of the violence taking into consideration peace journalism which should be embraced and the media should be a tool for reconciliation.
“Picture usage should be thoughtfully selected to avoid abusing public morality and inflict more pain on the viewer just as obscene and gory images should be used professionally if it must be used for the story”.
The workshop participants also advocated that peace Journalists should give more voice to the victims of violence and reject reports that prioritizes elite voices only.
They further state; “We have agreed that the voice would be given to the voiceless. That IDPs, Immigrants, Refugees would be given coverage in accordance with the principle of peace journalism”.
The participants also agreed that they would not portray any group, tribe, ethnic or region, as a terrorist organisation but will be more conscious about their safety from both the state actors and non-state actors while Nigerian journalists would avoid being foolhardy
They also noted that fact checking is identified as useful to help verify toxic narratives and put the records straight while the media should understand the biases of warring factions in a conflict, adding that this will help the media not to take sides, but promote peace in its reportage.
The Participants also called on the media proprietors, media managers to do more training and retraining of journalists and commended the US Embassy, Channels Academy and NUJ for jointly organizing the virtual training which imparted knowledge on the participants.
The virtual training was a collaboration between the US Embassy in Nigeria, Channels Academy and the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and facilitated by Steven Youngblood of the Park University Center for Global Peace Journalism in America.
