A professor of Broadcast Management and Media Law, Tonnie Iredia, who is also a former Director-General, Nigerian Television Authority, speaks to TUNDE AJAJA on the media industry, the recently revised Nigerian Broadcasting Code and other related issuesthe recent increase in the fine for hate speech, how would you rate the compliance of operators with the Nigerian Broadcasting Code, because some people would expect that gross abuse and/or disregard for the guidelines gave rise to the increase...
I didn’t observe a spike. I didn’t see anything that was particularly extraordinary, strange or new but what I have noticed is that the politicians themselves play a greater role as architects of hate speech and fake news. But, like I have always said, they instigate the fake news and the hate speech. They then disown the hate speech or fake news when it is questioned.
Both of them! First, let us look at it from the angle of who does what. Is the minister the regulator? No. So, the minister must allow the regulator to do its job. If it was the regulator that made the announcement, then you would only be quarrelling with the content. We should be able to draw that difference. Personally, I don’t even accept that the minister should have anything to do with the regulator.
Sometimes, we must give due recognition to people who are innocent. When people say government, it’s too general. For example, there are members of the National Assembly who were committed to seeing the law passed but when they started; some others told us the proponents were on their own. So, if people say government wants to gag the media, they have lumped everybody on both sides of the divide together, but you know leadership takes the blame and the credit all the time.
When a man says protesters are irritants, I’m not bothered by that because he only just called them names, but if he says they are irritants and they are arrested, that is where there is a problem. Everybody is free to express their views and people being called names can also say what they think of the government’s media managers. If, for example, journalists are angry that somebody used that kind of adjective, then it means you also don’t accept criticisms.
You know I’m also a lawyer, so it is very difficult for me to comment about a court judgment that I have not seen. I don’t know what the charges and defence were, so it’s difficult for someone like me to comment. I feel those who have a duty to comment on it, like the CSOs and human rights groups, have started and we are all watching. At the end of the day, more information would come out and it will help us too in making our own observations.
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