It takes a credible media to promote credible election
Yakubu Mohammed
Free, fair and credible elections have remained the bedrock of a true democracy which provides the citizens ample choice of candidates for elective offices. But conducting such a free and fair election, without let or hindrance, has almost always been a difficult, if not an impossible task, for Nigeria that finally managed, in 1999, to free itself from the shackles of military dictatorship.
But in the eternal struggle to get it right, the media – broadcast media, the radio and television, the print media, newspapers and magazines, and today we must add online publications and the social media, all of them have a very important role to play.
The role is even more crucial during presidential elections both in Nigeria and in the more advanced democracies, especially in the United States of America. Especially in the USA, the media, both the mainstream and the social media have had a major impact on the coverage and conduct of election.
The media has remained the main source of information about the candidates in the election and the issues involved in the campaign and the conduct of election. Despite perceived imperfections and allegations of bias, no democracy has been able to do away with the media.
Such is the pride of place the media enjoys in Nigeria that it is the only non-governmental institution recognised by the constitution and given specific assignment to hold the government accountable to the people. Section 22 of the constitution says: “The press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media shall at all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives (of the constitution) and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people.” It is in recognition of this special role that the press is regarded as the fourth estate of the realm, coming after the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary.
For emphasis, Chapter 2 of the constitution which is the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State policy, clearly states thus: “It shall be the duty and responsibility of all arms of government and of all authorities and persons exercising legislative, executive and judicial powers to conform to, observe and apply the provisions of this chapter of the constitution.” What this means is that security and the welfare of the people are the primary responsibility of government. It also provides for full and effective participation of the people in the government through their elected representatives. This underlines the axiom that sovereignty belongs to the people and their fundamental rights cannot be abridged by government. To ensure that government is accountable to the people, the constitution provides for spheres of influence and responsibility. The Legislature makes the law while the Executive operates the law and run the government. The Judiciary interprets the laws and adjudicates in conflicts between and within the other arms of government.
The gallery in which the press sits in parliament to report the proceedings of the Legislature is regarded as the Fourth Estate of the Realm. Though unelected, the media are the proud inheritors of this arduous constitutional responsibility – that of superintending over the other arms of government, calling them, from time to time to account to the people that elected them. It is an awesome power that journalists must exercise with absolute responsibility.
In democracy, one of the crucial roles of government is the conduct of elections. The electoral umpire, the body created by the constitution to conduct election, is the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC and the State Independent Electoral Commission, SIEC. The decisions of these bodies are final, subject of course to the intervention and ruling of the Judiciary. For election to be credible, for it to be free and to be fair depends largely on the performance of these electoral bodies. The media do not constitute the electoral umpire. Therefore it is not its responsibility to conduct a free and fair election But the media’s watchdog role makes it imperative for media managers to be acutely interested in the fairness and credibility of the election as they are acutely interested in all other matters in the community in which they operate. It is the media that report the activities of the electoral body and the preparation for election. The delineation of constituencies, voter registration and update of voters registers are all crucial phases in the preparation as well as provision of election materials and the erection of polling booths. The choice of men and women the commission appoints to supervise the election both permanent staff as well as the ad-hoc staff is very significant because the credibility of these officers will impact on the outcome of the election.
The real contest for power, the election proper, brings out the best or the worst in the men who supervise this crucial exercise. The most difficult people to manage arguably are the politicians, those that Ruth Frist cynically characterises as “men who compete for power, not men who use power to confront their country’s problems.” They come into the arena on the platform of political parties, except where the law permits of independent candidates.
Every party strives to win the election be it at the local government level, the state level or the Federal level. And all of them, are supposed to campaign for the endorsement of the voters across the country. But what separates one party from the other or one candidate from the other? What are the voters looking out for in the various parties and their respective candidates? Here lies the value of voter education which is primarily the responsibility of the parties. They are supposed to market their manifestoes to the electorate, addressing burning national issues and promising to fulfil the needs of the people.
Central to the business of voter education and getting potential voters to begin to assess the individual candidates both the presidential and the gubernatorial is political debate. During the debate which is televised nation-wide, candidates are given the opportunity to share their views and market themselves and canvass for votes. Presidential debates are centuries old in the USA. But the first ever televised presidential debate aired to millions of American viewers, voters inclusive, was held on September 26, 1960 between Vice-President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy. This tradition has taken root and is nor a critical, if not compulsory feature of presidential election in America. Some other countries have copied it as a way of presenting leading candidates to the public for assessment. But in Nigeria, the politicians embraced it half-heartedly. Some candidates, apparently cock-sure of their strength and electability or because of their self-acknowledged inadequacy, sometimes boycott the debate. Perhaps this is something that should be legislated into the presidential and governorship campaign.
Apart from the fact that some candidates treat the issue of voter education and vote canvassing through media debate cavalierly, the parties themselves have largely shirked their responsibilities. Instead of engaging in voter education seriously and methodically, they would rather explore how to manipulate of the political process and short circuit it. They usually do this by resorting to all known techniques of persuasion from propaganda to brainwashing, to put undue emphasis on the country’s various fault lines namely ethnicity, religion and other primordial sentiments to get votes.
This vacuum is, therefore, being filled as much as their resource and capacity allow, by the electoral body using its directorate of training or voter education. The media and civil society groups in various forms are very useful to the electoral body in respect of voter education. The media occasionally organises seminars and informal training programmes to sharpen the skills of their men and women who cover the elections. And the Guild of Editors, in association with other media bodies like the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria, NPAN and Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria, BON has developed the Nigerian Media Code of Election Coverage as a guide for effective coverage of elections. The statement of the broad principles of the code is captured in the following: “This media code of election coverage is predicated on the principle and expectation that relevant stakeholders, including the government, the political parties, the Election Management Body and Civil Society Organisations will contribute to the creation of an enabling environment for the media to perform its professional and social obligations during electoral processes.”
It is through the media that voters get to know much of what the parties promise to do and what differentiates one party from the other and one candidate from the other. The television stations, especially Channels, TVC, AIT Arise and to some extent, NTA, are doing commendable job by constantly scrutinizing some candidates and political party big wigs through their various news, current affairs and political programmes. They throw up engaging issues and draw the attention of vote seekers; they bring other political social commentators to shed light on the issues and matters of the moment.
Apart from correctly and faithfully reporting the activities of the election umpire and the political parties, the media should encourage their political desks to organise exhaustive interviews like the Concord Forum in the eighties and later the Newswatch Summit at which the editors hosted presidential aspirants and grilled them on various national issues. The exercise helped the politicians to reshape their policies and their thoughts and the readers, potential voters, to assess their capacity and capability of the various aspirants or candidates. It also helped to engage with the public for effective feedback. It was the print media’s equivalent of what the electronic media, radio and television stations, are doing to expand the field of political discourse to sensitise and raise public awareness and promote voter education.
Indeed, media contribution to a successful electoral process and democracy in practice is truly unquantifiable. This is more so during the presidential election where the candidates are far removed from the electorate. Apart from what the parties promise to do, the media also help to set the agenda to guide the voters by drawing out the respective positions of the candidates on crucial issues like the economy, restructuring, corruption, insecurity, infrastructural development, social issues like education, healthcare, youth capacity building and unemployment problems, among others
The editor or the anchor person in the television news or programme provides the guide to his team on how best his medium, newspaper, radio or television can cover the election with depth, credibility, fairness and dependability. Credibility may be a rare commodity in a country like Nigeria where elections are won or lost on the basis of politician’s ability to take unfair advantage of the numerous cleavages of ethnicity and religion and the use of money to compromise all the agencies saddled with the responsibility for a free, fair and credible outcome. It was Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher and media theorist, who in a book published in 1964 famously posited the dictum that “the medium is the message.” This connotes the fact the media must be credible and dependable for the audience to believe the message it conveys.
It follows therefore that the media must be credible enough to help the electoral process to achieve the level of credibility that would meet international standard. Professionalism is the key word. Journalists may not be partisan politicians but they are deemed by conventional wisdom to be political animals, who, by that fact, cannot be outrightly disinterested in the goings-on in their community, state and country. But their interest in the political contest should not cross the thin line between professionalism and partisanship. For example, if you are the editor of a newspaper even of one founded by a politician, your first consideration as editor is your profession. A trained professional journalist must resist the urge to use his newspaper for despicable political partisanship. You can report the activities of the contending parties fairly and faithfully to meet the demands of journalistic ethics and professionalism. But nobody would grudge him the right to his opinion which can be expressed unhindered either in his newspaper’s editorial comment or in his own opinion column or editorial columns to extol the virtues of his preferred party and the candidate. Usually, the editor has to learn to walk a tight-rope and to realise that he has enormous responsibility, directing the affairs of his medium at crucial times. And no time can be as crucial as election time, except perhaps when his country is at war.
It is necessary not to forget the sad events that sparked the Rwanda civil war in 1994. It was some little slip in the media bordering on false reporting that promoted hatred among rival ethnic groups – the Hutus and Tutsi. This helped to set that country ablaze in a genocidal madness that claimed between five hundred thousand and about two million lives.
Not to be forgotten also was the media hype that fuelled the post-election violence in Kenya from 2007 to 2008 which resulted in the death of thousands of people. This incident forced Kenyan editors to adopt an unusual policy of self-censorship. They agreed among themselves not to publish controversial stories that made reference to the ethnic identity of politicians contesting for power.
Nigeria may not go the way of the Kenyan media. The media here may not have to engage in blatant self-censorship but it can exercise restraint and stay clear of some trouble prone gimmicks like rogue pollsters fabricated to score fake leads and dim the prospects of the opponents. The newspapers should also resist the temptation of accepting well-funded wrap-around advertisements or advertorials that seek to denigrate political opponents. Publication of advertisements that seek to antagonise religious sensitivities of the opponents should be avoided, because it has the potential of causing trouble in the polity of diverse religious beliefs.
The newspapers may not be able to give equal space and column inches to contending political parties; but fairness demands that they should balance coverage of election and political stories to avoid bias. Of course, it is a daunting task to give equal coverage to all the registered political parties because of their unreasonably large number. Before the 2015 election, the number of registered parties went to 91. But, it has since been pruned down.
It is easy for TV and radio stations to give equal air times to candidates in an election time and to air the news of their activities in the same time belt. All the same, it behoves the media to adhere to the principle of fairness and objectivity and above all to be seen to be scrupulously factual and credible and never to enthrone blatant partisanship at the expense of professionalism and even self-respect. The obvious draw-back in the media efforts to be professional, apart from the declining qualities of journalists and the limited circulation of newspapers, is the intrusive but unregulated role of social media powered by internet and smart phones.
By social media one is not referring to the credible and responsible online publications run by professional journalists who are bound by the ethics of the profession, but the other arm of the social media that permits one or two individuals to engage in what is regarded as citizen journalism. Their stock in trade is the manufacture or fabrication of fake or blatantly false tales which they glibly pass on to the public as factual report of events.
Along with the intrusive social media, is the accompanying effect of Artificial Intelligence, defined by Wikipedia as “a set of technologies that enable computers to perform a variety of advanced functions including the ability to understand and translate spoken and written language, anal data and make recommendations.” The most worrisome aspect of this computer based technological innovation is the ability to create and turn an apparent or optical illusion into a near perfect reality. For instance, in an election period, Artificial Intelligence can be deployed to make candidate Musa, for instance, to say something that is absolutely and politically incorrect; call his opponent Davis the best politician who is destined to win an election, or the best president the country never had. Such outlandish performance can happen courtesy of Artificial Intelligence. Or, to have a fake INEC chairman, look like Professor Mahmud Yakubu, on prime-time television, announcing the disqualification of a leading candidate and, as a follow- up, be seen on a Channel Television Politics Today programme being interviewed by a Seun Okunbaloye.
