World Press Freedom: Nigerian media under digital siege

As World Press Freedom Day is being observed today, analysts say the Nigerian press is under fresh assaults from the digital space that present an existential threat.

The theme for this year’s day spotlights journalism under digital siege.

Time was when all a journalist had to do was produce a factual investigative report, and institutions of state including the police or even the executive arm of government brought to book those who had been indicted.

Today, the Nigerian press has sufficiently been defanged and the worst indictments are met by smear campaigns, state-sponsored attacks and whataboutism by former journalists and other e-bandits hired to whitewash the image of the government.

“When you publish things online, there are some hired people – what you call e-rats – hired by government officials who come to attack the publications or make some uncomplimentary comments about the writer and the organisation,” said Lekan Otufodunrin, executive director/ managing editor at Media Career Development Network.

According to Otufodunrin, the objective of this digital siege is to intimidate the journalist or the media house to back out from pursuing some reports that may not be favourable to them.

Nigeria’s ruling party, the All Progressive Congress, maintains a rag-tag army of e-bandits who drown out unfavourable reporting and bully journalists and citizens who have an unflattering opinion about the Buhari government.

Any investigative report indicting a government official or their sympathisers is met with coordinated attacks including hacking the website of the news organisation, vile attacks on social media against the reporter or the news organisation.

Amidst the noise, the focus turns from the story to the journalist and the media house. This pattern of subterfuge distracts from the revelations, providing cover for government officials who should act to feign ignorance.

In Nigeria, it is not enough for the journalists to uncover a crime, it seems he must also prosecute, for something to be done about it, one analyst said.

Daily on social media sites, especially Twitter, Nigerians with little grasp about media practice lobe insults and innuendos designed to disparage a constitutionally recognised institution created to hold their leaders to account on their behalf.

However, some argue that unethical practices of some journalists ranging from producing false reports, accepting inducements often termed ‘brown envelopes’ and lack of professionalism make these attacks justified.

“People in office are not even pretending to be accountable; they are brazenly displaying stolen wealth and journalists are doing nothing about it,” said Victor Eromosele, executive director of Centre for Petroleum Information.

While more could be done to hold leaders accountable, unless state institutions charged with this role actually do their job, and the public demand they do, there’s little else a journalist can do about his revelation.

What many who disparage the Nigerian media at every turn fail to recognise is that they are active participants in delegitimising an institution set up to promote public good – the very agenda of the corrupt elites and their government acolytes.

Like its counterparts across the world, the Nigerian press is severely challenged. Fallen revenue and poor remuneration have seen the departure of professionals, social media has promoted both openness and misinformation and the government continues to choke up the civic space.

Bloggers who pretend to be journalists spew lies and mushrooming online media sites competing for eyeballs publish falsehood as clickbait.

Some respected media houses have compromised journalism ethos to retain statutory or corporate advertising. Poorly paid journalists have been forced to depend on those they are meant to hold accountable at the cost of their dignity and professionalism.

This year’s World Press Freedom Day is themed ‘Journalism under digital siege,’ to spotlight the multiple ways in which journalism is endangered by surveillance and digitally-mediated attacks on journalists, and the consequences of all this on public trust in digital communications.

The latest UNESCO World Trends Report Insights discussion paper, ‘Threats that Silence: Trends in the Safety of Journalists,’ highlights how surveillance and hacking are compromising journalism.

Surveillance can expose information gathered by journalists including from whistle-blowers, and violates the principle of source protection, which is universally considered a prerequisite for freedom of the media and is enshrined in UN Resolutions.

Otufodunrin said even in Nigeria, policies like the recent Twitter suspension, cyber law of 2015 which criminalises reports that the government finds insulting, and crippling websites of media that published unflattering reports about government are examples of this digital siege.

“More than ever before, journalists are monitored when they are online, and when they are not, they are followed; journalists’ email and social media handles are hacked,” he said.

Surveillance may harm the safety of journalists by disclosing sensitive private information, which could be used for arbitrary judicial harassment or attack.

Between 2011 and 2021, the Committee to Protect Journalists recorded dozens of incidents of journalists being targeted by spyware and hundreds of journalists around the world have been selected as targets.

Read also: Stallion Times advises journalists on ethics of profession

The consequence of media capture is the elimination of all bulwarks against misrule.

The Nigerian government under Buhari has weaponised propaganda to insulate itself against criticism of incompetence. It has deployed savvy media practitioners to obfuscate issues and

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, in a recent report, urged media stakeholders and civil society groups to continue to harp on the inviolability of section 22 of Nigeria’s constitution.

It urged that campaigns must be sustained by civil society and human rights groups to ensure that journalists carry out their tasks without intimidation and that lawmakers must be proactive at amending and repealing the obnoxious sections of the Cybercrimes Act 2015 which violate international and regional treaties on human rights to which Nigeria is a state party and provisions of sections of the Nigerian constitution.