By Abuchi Obiora
This week, we are commencing a two-part series in a matter which urgently needs to be addressed in order to save human lives.
Charity, they say, begins at home. For this reason, I must start the sessions on the Kaleidoscope Opinion Column this year, 2023, by addressing the fatality that befell some members of the journalism profession in South Sudan as a result of a viral video report of the President of that country ‘peeing’ on himself while their national anthem was being recited before the opening ceremony of a completed road project. For the slain journalists in South Sudan, I pray, may their souls rest in Peace Profound.
Another recent report by the Committee to protect Journalists (CPJ) in South Sudan says that six Journalists are still being held in that country as a result of the same incident. Mr. Patrick Oyet, the President of the South Sudan Union of Journalists had told Reuters that the journalists “are suspected of having knowledge of how the video of the President urinating himself came out.” But the journalists who work with the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation denied that their organization never aired the footage for which they are held in detention. In his defense of the government, the South Sudan Information Minister, Michael Mukuei told Voice of America (VOA) Radio that people should want to learn why the journalist where detained.
I must warn readers that this discourse will be a little longer than the usual presentations of The Kaleidoscope Opinion Column because of my passion for the topic on which I write today – a topic that is yet to be addressed in a classroom format.
Northern and Southern parts of Sudan as originally constituted is vastly peopled by Egyptian immigrants who were totally in control of the country which was colonized by Britain after an imperialist deal with Italy was struck. The country was to secure its independence from an Anglo-Egyptian condominium in 1956. From that time the Southern part of the country began to accuse the Northern part of the country of marginalization, and this consistently caused unrest in the country. In 2005, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was officially signed to end the conflict between the North and the South.
The CPA set a date for a Referendum on the self-determination request of the South in January 2011. In that Referendum, voters overwhelmingly chose independence for the South Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan was declared an independent country on July 9, 2011. Salva Kiir Mayardit, also known as Salva Kiir, an Akon of Anglo-Egyptian background, born September 13, 1951 (71 years old in 2022), a founding member of Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army and the first Vice President of Sudan, became the South Sudanese President on 9th July, 2011, the day the Republic of South Sudan was declared.
A professional soldier who has severally been associated with the underground activities of freedom fighting after his primary school education at Kojok Primary School, he enlisted in the core Sudanese Army in 1972 after playing an active role in the anti-government rebellion of black African animist and Christian forces in South Sudan against the Muslim Arab-dominated central Sudanese government in the north during the first Sudanese civil war. Salva Kiir is a tough man with South Sudan securely held in his form grip.
The Republic of South Sudan is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Uganda and Kenya with Juba, the largest city in the country as the capital and seat of government. The population of the Republic of South Sudan was estimated in 2019 to be 12,778,250.
Let us figure out South Sudan from the perspective of the African continent.
Africa is a vast, blessed and under-populated continent. Yes, under-populated! I can prove this through a comparative analysis of the wealth and other resources of African countries with those of the countries in Europe, North and South America and Asian, Far Eastern countries. For example, with the latest United Nations projected population (Sunday, December 25, (2022) of 1,420,147,590, which is equivalent to 16.72% of the current total world population, Africa, with more arable land than any other continent in the world has a land mass that can take up all of Europe, China and the United States of America joined together.
Sitting in a total land mass of 30.5 million square kilometers by divine providence and also being the hub of most of the world’s mineral and other natural resources and home to an increasing young army of talented men and women, Africa has, most times, been in the news for the wrong reasons. Some of the reasons for which Africa is castigated arise from the unpatriotic and self-condemnation attitude of Africans and their lack of love for their continent.
This week’s discourse will look at two recent but separate events in two African countries, South Sudan and Somalia, with a view to drawing out the difference from two apparently similar events with different implications for the African continent and the politics of these two countries. This week’s discourse will also re-instate the need for Africans to exercise restraint in matters that negatively affect the perception of Africa and Africans by citizens of other continents, and expatiate the reason why necessity and the overriding interest of the African continent demands that the greater good of African nations and Africans must be served by the activities of Africans.
We shall do this by looking at the noble profession of journalism and the need for journalists in Africa to avoid indiscretion while they manage all information that filter out of the African continent, before presenting such information for consumption by the international community. An old Public Relations adage says that ‘if you do not say here I am, nobody will say there you are’.
Before we analyse and find out what went wrong in South Sudan and why some journalists there could senselessly jump unto and be consumed by a live grenade, let us first find out what journalism is and what it is not, the expectations from a journalist as he/she goes about discharging his/her duties as a member of the fourth estate of the realm, being also the watchdog to all organized societies.
For general understanding, journalism is “the work of collecting, writing and publishing materials in newspapers and magazines or on television and radio” (Oxford Advanced Leaner’s Dictionary, Special Price Edition: A.S Hornby, 1995). The five principal types of journalism are investigative, news, reviews, columns (as in The Kaleidoscope Opinion Column) and feature writing. As a journalist, one must be guided by some professional ethics and these ethics may be summed up as to strive to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, thorough and fair to all parties concerned in the reportage. Being thorough, a good journalist should be interested in the following six key facts in a story – ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘why’ and ‘how’.
Whether he/she works on hard news or soft news, a good journalist must maintain independence, unless he chooses, for the purpose of the public good as the watchdog of the organized society, to identify with an opinion. Because the first obligation of a good journalist is to tell the truth as his/her first loyalty is also to his/her readership (and not his employers!). A good journalist must be an independent monitor of power as he articulates issue with utmost discipline after thorough verification of his facts.
While a journalist is not meant to be silent on any social issues called to his/her attention, a good journalist must marshal out his/her facts with the best available words and give out his/her facts with impartiality and neutrality, presenting other viewpoints and sides to his/her story, if these other viewpoints and sides exist.
There are four categories of journalistic roles, that is, the distinct ideas within which journalism practice may be conceptualized. These are:
- Normative : what a journalist is supposed to do
- Cognitive: what a journalist wants to do
- Practice: what a journalist really does
- Narrative: what a journalist thinks he/she does.
Within these four distinct ideas of the journalistic roles, some conflicts do really appear in the field as the journalist is guided by his/her sentiments, sometimes, to his/her detriment and risk to his/her life. This has become more pronounced with the advent of the new media, (the social media) and the entrance to the practice of journalism of freelance operators, undisciplined and untrained minds, to the profession.
This, somehow, has impacted much on the practice of journalism making our definition of journalism earlier given in this discourse to be a classroom, dictionary definition, different from what contemporary journalism has become.
Leveraging on his/her power to influence public perceptions of socio-political developments in the society, a good journalist must be able to use his indirect yet smooth influence on public opinion to keep peace and maintain public order, and not resort to sensationalism that may trigger social unrest and tear the society apart. For this reason, a good journalist must not abuse his traditional right to information as enshrined in the laws of most civilized societies, the freedom of expressing his opinion on such information or even criticizing such information and government policies.
With this background knowledge of the profession of journalism, it is clear that our traditional journalism, in contemporary time, has changed to what I call ‘sensible journalism’. ‘Sensible journalism’ as compared with our dictionary meaning of journalism involves the conscious effort to exercise restraint in processing and managing information in order to survive and succeed as a journalist in contemporary world. Sensible journalism is to recognize that the practice of journalism additionally requires capturing (different from collating news, some of which may be fake) newsworthy materials; sifting publishable (different from editing) materials so ‘captured’; protecting (as in overall safety of ‘captured’ and ‘sifted’ information in one’s care by never divulging it to anyone because not everything known to a journalist must be published or be known by a second person, if that serves the public good); and finally managing the information to be vended at the appropriate time, in the public space and in a manner that the overall public good is enhanced.
The third item here in the three-tier ladder of discretion in information management by journalists (which is the protection of information), requires that the modern time journalist must subscribe to the secrecy code as do people in the intelligence and espionage professions in order not to set the society ablaze. A good journalist should avoid getting his audience to clash with constituted authorities.
Having gone this far to know what journalism is and what it is not, let us go back to our first case study in this discourse – the ‘peeing’ incident in South Sudan. SOS (Save Our Souls) voices rang out from South Sudan telling the world that all the journalists suspected to have been instrumental to exposing the health challenges of Salva Kiir which caused him to pee on himself in a public ceremony were disappearing one after the other, all suspected to have been killed by the agents of the President, with the prime suspect having been said to have hanged himself in his apartment.
But the question is. After those journalists had perfected the public ridicule of their President, why didn’t they proceed immediately to exile from the venue of that ceremony? If they actually worked for the opposition, it was the duty of that opposition camp to protect them, including giving them enough cover till they comfortably settle down in exile or could they have been making pun of such a dangerous man, with full knowledge of the capacity of the man whom they ridiculed to vent vengeance on his traducers without providing an escape route for themselves? For whatever reason they had to walk where even angels fear to fly, the fact remains that those journalists now dead, were very indiscrete in managing a vital information they acquired by dint of their profession and closeness to the government of the day.
Being a human being, a journalist may have sympathy for the opposition and naturally will favour the opposition in his/her management of the information at his/her disposal but such a dangerous decision should have been followed with maximum safety consideration. Safety in any profession, including journalism, should be the primary consideration for any practitioner because one must be alive to deliver on one’s duties. Some deaths experienced by journalists around the world have been as a result of indiscretion on the part of the victims. I think that fatality in journalism can be reduced if journalists learn to take conscious efforts to walk away from the dangerous terrain of ruthless politicians and political leaders of sundry mien. In all human endeavors and practices, the consideration of safety must transcend every other consideration, including heroism.
This is not to say that a journalist must cow down to the dubious machinations of an evil authority or government but rather, to say that a journalist must adopt the attitude of an undercover agent not only in his investigation but also in the presentation of the facts which he must not rush to release at a time because he already has those facts.
As people say, there are many ways to kill a rat. You do not have to kill the rat in your house by setting your house ablaze. A journalist who wants to achieve his aim in protecting and publishing the truth as a member of the fourth estate of the realm do not have to go on a suicide mission by jumping senselessly on a live grenade, which is the only way to describe a faceoff with Salva Kiir Mayardit of South Sudan.
Presently, Salva Kiir Mayardit rides roughshod on South Sudan so any attempt to do a frontal attack on him or the interest he holds dear such as his self-esteem, can only end in fatality. Though prosperity has come in trickles to South Sudan much better than what they had before July 11th 2011 when they were granted independence by the process of a Referendum, the leadership of Salva Kiir Mayardit has not actually lived up to meet the expectation of justice and liberty which are the two other components of the country’s motto which reads “Justice, Liberty, Prosperity”.
For journalists, seeking for martyrdom in a dangerous political terrain is both unedifying and unprofitable. Most times, the person goes away from the earth unwept, un-honoured and unsung as his intentions may remain either discarded, stillborn, or unachieved. Like wild fire, the viral video of the ‘peeing’ President spread across the world in minutes, courtesy of the social media. With social media, the world has become a global hamlet where news spread with the speed of light.
The advent of the internet has made the mass media industry (including journalism) the fastest growing and most integrated, integrative and interactive profession in modern world with thousands more of people worldwide enlisting to be part of the industry. Before the evolvement of standard and standardized ethics in the new media, journalists must be discreet in practicing their trade to avoid walking into trouble.
Journalists are watch dogs of organized societies and not guard dogs of Hobbesian, beastly societies. While the law enforcement agencies are the guard dogs of organized societies, the judiciary through the application of the law, acts as the check and balance for Hobbesian, disorganized societies as South Sudan presently is under the watch of Salva Kiir Mayardit.
My opinion is that those journalists who picked up the video of the ‘peeing’ President and reported it to the world actually went beyond the mandate of decent journalistic practice. They involved in petty, sensational news vending that was not their business, though that mistake was not enough to earn them death.
The kaleidoscope wishes all its teeming readers and everybody out there around the world a Happy New Year 2023.
(TO BE CONCLUDED)
ABUCHI OBIORA
For:
Global Upfront Newspapers
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