Yellow journalism and the mini-skirt syndrome

Of all the several attempts to describe news, perhaps the one that aptly captures the ultimate essence of brevity and conciseness is the expression that “news is like a mini skirt short enough to attract curiosity, but long enough to cover the subject matter”.

If the above description is anything to go by, then the evolution of the mini skirt perfectly describes the recent wave of short stories and catchy headlines in the news media that attract instant curiosity, but may be misleading in the end, especially to unsuspecting members of the society.

However just as the mini skirt was unpopular in the medieval period where it is abhorred for a lady to deliberately show more legs than she should, so is the idea of snappy headlines that convey outright falsehood or half-truths and make much ado about nothing, unpopular with the founders of journalism.

Tommy lytle, former Toronto Star news editor, in an attempt to give a succinct description of the concept of news said “news is what I say it is”. I took my time to meditate on his description and couldn’t agree less particularly in the face of the new, everyone – can – report era of the new media. To Lytle, news is selected according to what you have available, what you think your readers want and not according to the principles of prominence, novelty or even significance.

From the point of objectivity and gate-keeping, the Nigeria print media has maintained a steady flow of fairness and relative balance over the years, thanks to unique house-styles, editorial processes, court injunctions and third party advocacies. However, even though we cannot totally absolve the print media of particles of political sentiments and public relations’ immersion, bulk of the danger of yellow journalism doesn’t sit with print, but lies with the social media.

Social media and online news platforms have become a major source of news for a lot of Nigerians and contents shared on these platforms, whether from individual users or the media houses, have become the bulk of what many of our online population considers as news. Because of the spontaneity of the human mind and eyes, a person is more likely to click on a story with a catchy headline, especially from a trusted platform and believe the accuracy of such story on face value without considering the authenticity, and here is where my concern lies.

Just last week, I read about the engagement of Nigerian rapper lynxxx to ex beauty queen Munachi Abii and days after the rapper came out to deny the report openly. This is just one of the many cases of outright falsehood or half-truths packaged in the headlines of online stories for the purpose of attracting likes, shares and comments.

Do social media platforms have a responsibility to debunk fake news and what measures are being put in place to help the online community develop the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood? Most importantly what strict measures are being enforced to punish offenders? These are questions that we would love to see answers to without bias.

I have seen so much hate, discrimination and ethnicity paraded online by Nigerians after reading a post that speaks to or against their beliefs, ethnic backgrounds and even religion, a development that will result in more harm than good if left unchecked.

Not to throw the baby out with the bath water, it is important to note that the proliferation of news outlets has expanded the scope of communication and ease its spread to larger audiences than ever before in history. However, we must constantly ensure that the principles of fairness, objectivity, and balance are upheld regardless of the medium, whether print or online.

So the next time you read a story that lacks your desired content or get disappointed by a misleading headline get your mind off it, think about the attraction of a young lady swinging seductively in a mini skirt and remember that what you see isn’t always what you get.

 

Femi Isaac

Femi Isaac is a public relations consultant and social commentator based in Lagos