By Abdullahi Maiwada
It is obvious that in today’s world, technology is central to the process of news gathering and dissemination. The generation that witnessed the Spanish Flu of 1918 had no quantum of information we receive today in relation to the novel and vicious COVID-19 ravaging our dear planet.
For journalists, the experience of covering a global pandemic is unique, hectic and monotonous to the 21st century press. Dare I say that all those who witnessed the 1918 Flu have passed away or at a very diminished health due to age. Record on Wikipedia shows that Flu infected 500 million people – about third of the world’s populations as at the time; the death toll was estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million. It was indeed the deadliest pandemic in human history”.
With such scary records of Spanish flu, it is germane for journalist to understand that information processing at this time cannot be as always, the conventional method of reportage is ineffective to a pandemic-ridden nation. Journalists cannot spread information without recourse to personal health, ethical consideration in the profession and human angles with desired attention. We must agree that the primary essence of reporting at this critical time is to save humanity from becoming prey to a novel virus.
If the essence is to survive the catastrophe, then those bombarding the media space with scary statistics of thousands’ deaths and millions infections globally are obviously compounding our situation.
On this premise, this piece was inspired through a paper delivered by Eugenie Abu titled: “Reporting Life Stories in these Uncertain times” in a WEBINAR SERIES themed: Humanising Covid-19 Reporting. The webinar was organised by Association of Communication Scholars and Professionals of Nigeria in partnership with International Press Centre (ACSPN and IPC). Eugenie Abu is a renowned veteran broadcast journalist with Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), columnist, media consultant, multimedia strategist, prize winning author and MD CEO of the Eugenie Abu Media.
In her delivery, she highlighted the technicalities and the beauty in coming up with captivating lifestyle stories which may pacify and calm people. She emphasized: life must go on during and after the pandemic. I am not implying that we should neglect hardcore news, but soft news will be much more appreciated at this critical time.
For the sake of citizen journalist, let me seize this opportunity to highlight the definition of hard and soft stories. According to Reuters Institute for Study of Journalism “Hard news is typically used to refer to topics that are usually timely, important and consequential, such as politics, international affairs and business news. Conversely, soft news topics includes entertainment, celebrity and lifestyle news”.
With research, humour, passion, the right medium and audience, we can create striking, admirable, mind boggling and captivating soft news stories that will save a lot of people from the fear and depression about COVID-19. One of the answers to soft stories is lifestyle reporting.
I myself and others sharing my thought are deeply obsessed, frustrated and depressed with dooms-day journalism in which all local and international news outlets are saturating us with scary news of death and upsurge in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases all over the world.
The gloomy stories alternate from one angle of the world to another. It started from Wuhan (China), shift to Iran, Italy, Spain, UK, France, Germany, US and back here Nigeria. This made me to always glance at News for few minutes in 24 hours and shift my focus to stations such as National Geographic, Discovery Family and Religious Channel that focus less on Coronavirus.
Another dimension that I believe is funny and inconsequential is the contention over terminologies by communication professionals. Example is the argument over the appropriateness of either using ‘social distancing’ or ‘physical distancing’ as one among numerous measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Below is a comment by Senator Mark Mike I found worthy of sharing. This is a reaction to a paper presented by Muyiwa Akintunde with a title “Between Social Distancing and Physical Distancing”.
“In terms of terminology, I don’t see any need for distinguishing between the terms for the attainment of impacts. Communication gives terms their meanings. Even if terms would mean different things in a normal time, they take a contextual meaning in abnormal times, and afterwards the contextual meanings become normal. This is where connotations and denotations come in. I must admit that at facial value there exists denotational difference between social distancing and physical distancing. However, connotatively speaking, there won’t be social without physical.
The social derives its essence from the physical. Thus the social entity is a composition of physical entities. Let’s bear in mind that communication depends on both the communicator (the source) and the communicatee (the audience) to make meaning”.
Dwelling into lifestyle reporting is a clarion call to journalists, bloggers, columnists and citizen journalist; they should explore rather than joining the bandwagon of reporting conspiracy theories, fake news and unverified information. It is important for reporter to set his objective on who he/she is reporting for.
Are you sourcing news for its vitality? Are you doing it for yourself? Are you protecting the interest of your proprietors? Are you protecting the interest of the government (proxy mouthpiece) and finally are you doing what you are doing in the interest of the ordinary person on the street? I am sure the last option is more righteous, ethical and fair if we all agree that objectivity is practically impossible.
In her closing remarks, Prof. Oluyinka Esan attest that COVID-19 is a form of war that we have not covered before as journalists “Reporters should not be like parrots, you are the heartbeat of the nation as an entity responsible for pumping information”.
Finally, I am concluding this piece with the emphasis on ABC (Accuracy, Brevity and Clarity) in news reporting (whether hard or soft). This terminology as popularised by one of my lecturers that thought me Broadcasting, always sink in me even though I do not belong to mainstream reporting.
Happy World Press Freedom Day. With 2020 theme: Journalism without Fear and Favor.
abdullmaiwada@gmail.com
