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NIGERIA`S MEDIA WATCHDOG
Diamond Publications Limited is an active publishing company that has distinguished itself in magazine and book publishing since it began operatios in 1991. Its main products are on the Nigerian media.
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Coping with a curious omission
  It was a face saving reporting when a handful of newspapers announced on their front pages July 26 that the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos had ruled that the NPC Decree No 85 of 1992 and NPC (Amendment) Decree No 60 of 1999 were incompatible with society's standards.
“Court proscribes Nigerian Press Council Act”, says the Guardian. “Court voids Nigerian Press Council law”, echoes Vanguard. Readers would be forgiven if they felt they were learning of a recent event, but instead it was stale news, coming 151 days after the event. When the press finally woke up from its slumber it conveniently forgot to mention that a notice of appeal had been filed against the celebrated judgment since May 24.
The development raises questions about the importance the press attaches to its own affairs and about reportorial skills. So, what went wrong? ...| Read more
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Endless War
By Lanre Idowu
The Federal Government has received the report of the probe panel established last year to look into the recurring ethno-religious crises in Plateau state. Receiving the report from panel chairman, Chief Solomon Lar, a former governor of the State, and founding chairman of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party , President Goodluck Jonathan promised that its recommendations will be studied and implemented. Ahead of the government white paper, Lanre Idowu examines the issues that have shaped the Plateau crises.
The recurring crises in Jos, heartland of the Middle Belt, call for prayers, vigilance, atonement and repentance. Too much blood has been shed; too many dreams aborted in the evil and misguided belief that something good can come out of violence.
In the last one decade thousands of lives have been wasted. In the first quarter of this year, close to 1000 people were killed in a mindless orgy of violence. Since then combatants on the different sides of the divide have perfected the stealthy act of smoking out their victims in the dead of the night before hacking them to death. It is an unconventional warfare, conceived by hatred, nurtured by bigotry, and executed with cruelty. The latest harvest of deaths came Saturday, July 17 in Mazzah village where another eight lives were snuffed out; four alone from a clergyman's household comprising of his wife, two children and a grandson...| Read more
Writing is easy!?
By Lanre Idowu
On a wall in the head office of the defunct Thisweek magazine was a poster, which always fascinated visitors that streamed into its premises some two decades ago. Its art direction had a figure behind a typewriter, trying to commit his thoughts to the blank paper staring at him. The copy read: “Writing is easy; all you have to do is sit in front of your typewriter until the sweat on your brow turns to droplets of blood.”
As visitors often stopped to ponder over the truth behind the poster's claim, letting out a sigh, chuckle or laughter, so were the journalists in the house reminded that it spoke to the heart of their occupation.
In an era when NITEL monopolised voice and data communication and there was no mobile telephony or the Internet to aid communication, the reporter, who had travelled twelve kilometres in three hours in the stifling and mind-numbing heat of public buses and had forty minutes to submit a report, recognised the poster's wry humour. The same way as the columnist, who had a week to put the column together and had been unable to do so two hours to deadline...| Read more
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Media Practitioners?
Like all human beings, journalists and other communication professionals in the mass media make mistakes. They err, for to err is human.
However, when a person frequently or regularly spells his own name wrongly, or worse still, when a person cannot tell others his real name, correctly, then that surely surpasses an error. That is a blunder, an egregious error.
The British have a slang "blow the gaffe." It means, "to let a secret become known." Well, this might not be a closely guarded secret, but do you know the person who cannot spell his name, or tell others his real name, correctly? Lord, have mercy! The person, or rather, the group of persons, is MEDIA PRACTITIONERS, for that is the name by which some journalists and other communication professionals in the Nigerian mass media have chosen to identify themselves and all their colleagues.
Examples of the usage, "media practitioners," abound in the Nigerian mass media, and can be inspected in newspapers, magazines and books. But you certainly do not deserve to be bombarded by a dossier of this gaffe before you are made to believe that it is rife. Just one example should suffice...| Read more
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Sanusi's panacea for electricity
VANGUARD
Simplistic propositions from an expert of Mallam Sanusi's ranking should disturb discerning minds.
Nigeria's electricity is not suffering from poor investment it suffers from corruption, the type that makes it impossible for billions of dollars that Olusegun Obasanjo's government invested in it to make any impact.
A National Assembly probe of the National Integrated Power Project and the billions of dollars it cost sank in the morasses of allegations of corruption against legislators. Can that happen in Ghana? Would its government throw billions of dollars at projects without results?
When Mallam Sanusi talks about increased tariff, he ignores infrastructure challenges that NIPP contractors said inhibited movement of heavy equipment imported for NIPP.
Are we to wait for increased tariff to solve these too? Mallam Sanusi should spare Nigerians further depletion of their expectations from government.
Vanguard, August 3, 2010
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Daily Trust, Thursday, July 29, 2010. Pg. 26
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