Till date, I do not think anyone will doubt the fact that the Nigerian Television Authority NTA, remains the largest single public TV network in Africa. That is a fact. But in the past decade, their audience has dwindled scandalously that even those who work with NTA, rarely consume any information from their own station.
The same station where kids used to rush with lightning speed to sit on bare floors to watch programs like Tales by Moonlight, Speak Out, Cockcrow at Dawn, Samanja, Mirror in the Sun, Checkmate, I Need To Know and many other very educative programs, has lost its appeal not just amongst young people but also amongst the elites who concoct the lies that the station churns out.
Using the NTA as a classic example, how they pointed fingers at the emergence of private media houses as the cause of their misfortune, in like manner, the downward spiral of the fortunes of some self-appointed journalism gate keepers, is making them think that popular media practitioners, who were not originally trained as journalists, are the reason for their woes. These classroom and textbook journalists are about town fouling the air and trying to tell us who should be practicing journalism as they teach us in the classrooms, even when most of them know little or nothing about the practice of impactful journalism.
I don’t want to mention some of the names of these self acclaimed pontificators, but I want to tell each and every one of them that; what you should be perturbed about is why the public no longer enjoys your kind of journalism and prefers to follow those who did not train as journalists enmasse? Why has the popular appeal shifted to individuals who may not be trained as journalists, but are practicing journalism? Why are those trained as journalists now incapable of serving the public the menu they enjoy consuming?
What is the quality, content, model and intent of the journalism curriculum today? Does it retain the capacity to produce pen pushers that can capture the imagination of the population? What is the quality and depth of those training the journalist? Comparatively, how many of those textbook journalists have been able to make impactful reports that brought measurable change as against those who weren’t trained as journalists but are practicing journalism?
If you are able to answer these posers frankly, you would have defined who a journalist is. The thing is that you are stuck with what the textbooks told you, what your journalism lecturers told you, what the professional organizations told you. Others who weren’t originally trained as journalists are targeting what the people need. They are serving the journalistic appetite and consumerism of the people directly. That’s why the people are running to them now every time they need the media. Not because they don’t know that you are trained as a journalist, but because they no longer need your services.
And let me now tell you what your problem is: You are angry from within. Just shout it out loud and say you are envious of the wave the person living rent free in your head is making. It’s that simple. You know it yourself. In the deepest recesses of your heart, na envy dey worry you. You are upset that even without what you think you know better, that person is ahead of you. If you say so, you would not break any law. You simply would have said the truth because, ENVY is exactly what is wrong with you.
People are risking their lives investigating stories you cannot, and risking their livelihoods asking questions you cannot dare to ask, yet all you classroom and textbook journalists fiddle with in your brain, is who trained as a journalist or not? There is a cliche in my place that; “the food of a cook who learnt cooking from a textbook, and the food of a cook who learnt how to cook from mama, do not taste the same.”
The few most popular TVs, Radios and Newspapers in Nigeria today are manned mostly by people who were not trained as journalists. While the most inefficient ones around are those manned by people who were trained as journalists. Most of them were only trained to earn salaries from practicing journalism as a career, while those who picked up journalism are using it as a tool to change society.
This is not in any way to detract from the argument for improved and continuous training to be more efficient in the practice of journalism. It is a very vital and essential requirement for everyone who wants to make significant progress in the field. This belaboring is to tell those who think that others must knock on their doors before picking a pen or gadget to practice journalism, because they sat in a classroom to study it, that they should all get out there, into the field and do what they were trained to do, make measurable impact, and they’ll be no space for others or shut their mouths forever!
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.
Disclaimer: The opinion expressed in this article is strictly that of the author, Agba Jalingo, and does not represent TheLumineNews, its agent or the organization the author works for.
