The
Senate President David Mark was recently attacked for calling for the censorship
of the social media.
But
in a statement pushed out yesterday, the Senate President said he was
misquoted.
Here
is the full text of the message routed through his Special Adviser on Media,
Kola Ologbondiyan.
Recently, the President of the Senate, Senator David
Mark, delivered a keynote address at the Senate press corps Retreat in
Umuahia, Abia Sate. The theme of the Retreat was: The Role of the Media
in Promoting Good Governance. The event had in audience the state Governor,
Chief Theodore A. Orji, Senators Ayogu Eze, Eyinnaya Abaribe, Nkechi Nwaogwu
and a host of media practitioners and activists as well as other eminent
Nigerians.
When Senator Mark was invited to the podium to deliver
his address, he recalled his interaction with the members of the Senate Press
Corps who came to invite him to the occasion. According to him, the members of
the Corps gave him the liberty to speak his mind on the workings of the media
adding that the power conferred on him by the Corps also granted him the
authority to criticize the media.
He however noted that he would thread with caution
“because a goat will not visit a lion’s den on the pretext that the lion is
sick and return home in one piece.” As his observation sent the large audience
laughing, the President of the Senate quickly added that he is wise enough to
know that the liberty given to him by the Senate Press Corps was a Greek gift.
Senator Mark also informed the audience that since he
was quoted out of context that mobile phones was not for the poor myth, he had
learnt to read a prepared text wherever he went to deliver an address. “I have
challenged anybody to show me a quote in my own words where I said telephone is
not for the poor. Nobody has been able to produce it yet I have to defend this
everyday that what I said was if you must use a phone then you have to pay for
the service.”
Noting that he always love to speak from the heart, the President of the Senate said he hoped and prayed that whatever he would present in his address to the Senate Press Corps at the event would not be misconstrued and misrepresented to Nigerians who were not present at the event.
It was as if Senator Mark saw tomorrow or had a premonition of how his innocuous remark on the social media would be misinterpreted and misrepresented by mischief makers who have been lurking around to attack him.
In his address, the President of the Senate had
asserted that “the emergence of the social media like facebook, twitter,
blackberry messenger, YouTube etc have changed the face of the media practice
by making information sharing easier, faster and quicker. But this is not
without its demerits. Social media has become a threat to the ethics of media
practice and good governance because of its accessibility and absolute freedom.
Every freedom carries a responsibility. Even in the advanced
democracies, where we all agree that good governance is practiced, there
is no absolute freedom."
Continuing, Senator Mark expressed the belief that
“there must be a measure to check the negative tendencies of the social media
in our country. I say this because media practice, particularly journalism,
process news gathering and dissemination. It also operates a feedback mechanism
and where the practitioners erred there is room for rebuttal. But in the social
media a faceless character can post any information that is absolutely false
and misleading but will never retract it. At the end of the day one is
bombarded with questions over what one has no business with. I suggest that
schools of mass communication and journalism should review their curricular to
include the operations of social media.”
But hardly had he returned to his seat after the
address when mischief makers began to work on their blogs in the social media.
The message of the President of the Senate, delivered in a simple language, has
not only been misconstrued, it has become misrepresented and had begun to
spread like a wildfire. Mark had become the victim of the fear he had expressed
before his address.
The wildest among the reactions said Senator Mark had
called for censorship of the social media. There were those who said the
President of the Senate stated that social media was being used to insult the
leaders of the nation like him while others became as mundane as alleging that
he wanted the social media to stop criticizing those in authority and to write
only their good sides. All these are absolute falsehood.
From the excerpts of the speech quoted above, it is
manifest that the President of the Senate neither called for the censorship of
the social media nor alleged that the medium was being used to insult the
Nigerian leaders like him. He also did not ask the social media to stop criticizing
the Federal Government and write only on its good sides. Rather, he called for
measures that would check the negative tendencies inherent in the use of the
social media. That, I believe, is a genuine call that would help refocus the
medium.
One would therefore have expected on-line publishers to
join the clarion call made by Senator Mark that the assault to news gathering
and dissemination being perpetrated on the social media be checked. There are
several instances when social media activists have posted falsehood and readers
believed them only to discover later that the post was bogus. How does this
help the credibility of the social media as a medium? For instance, few days
after members of the National Youth Service Corp posted to Bauchi State went to
camp, a section of the social media posted falsehood that Boko Haram sect had
attacked the Bauchi camp and about 50 people killed.
It was soon discovered that the information was false
and totally mischievous. How can this be justified? Yet Senator Mark did not
call for sanctions against those who made such posts but called for a check
against such negative tendencies.
For the avoidance of doubts, the President of the
Senate’s interest in the media has never been hidden and he demonstrated this in
his several interfaces with the stakeholders of the industry before the passage
of the Freedom of Information Bill by the 6th National Assembly.
Even at the Umuahia event, he expressed kind words for
the media and its conscientious operators by saluting “the courage, doggedness
and steadfastness of the Nigerian media.” Senator Mark also acknowledged the
fact that “the press has been in the vanguard for the promotion and sustenance
of democracy we now enjoy. Even the struggle for independence was pioneered and
fought for by the Nigerian media.
“Sometimes I do disagree with you, but the media
generally has fared well. They can still do more by deliberately planning and
sustaining the efforts to bridge the information gap between the leaders and
the led. The press can achieve this if it applies the basic principles of
patriotism, accountability, transparency, and objectivity in the discharge of
its duty.”
Is it not curious that some social media activists
turned the table against Senator Mark by concocting lies and ascribing them to
him? Was it for nothing that they ignored the details of his printed speech?
Was there an agenda to deliberately denigrate his personage and cast a slur on
his hard earned reputation? How else can one rationalize the insistence of some
social media activists that Senator Mark called for the censorship of the
medium even when his speech showed clearly that he never made such a call?
Perhaps one would have ignored some of the ridiculous
posts but for the successive analysis that have been following. It is suspect
that in most of these analyses of this hoax, there are subtle attempts to foist
a label of “social media must be censored” on the Senate President. This is
mischievous, irresponsible, wicked and unjust agenda that will not stick.
Senator Mark did not make any gaffes in his keynote
address to the Senate Press Corps on the role of the media in promoting good
governance.
Rather, his critics, who have continually ignored the
text of his address which he read in the public, are mischief makers.