Fake News: Osoba Urges Media Summit To Enhance Credible Journalism

Veteran journalist and former governor of Ogun State, Aremo Olusegun Osoba, has said credible journalism may elude  Nigeria unless media leaders evolve a consistent summit that will keep the untrained bloggers parading themselves as journalists away from the business of credible journalism.

At such summits which he described as “self-regulatory” retreats, Osoba specifically advocated that media leaders in Nigeria would have the opportunities of rubbing minds, sanitise the industry and also chart the way forward for the practice of the profession in a way that would permanently keep bloggers off their stands for credible information dissemination in the society.

The former governor made the advocacy in his speech at the second Nigeria Media Leaders’ Summit held in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.

Convened by The Journalism Clinic in conjunction with its other affiliates, the summit was themed: “In Pursuit Of Products, Profits and More” and was packaged for media practitioners as a veritable knowledge-sharing platform toward advancing the media landscape in Nigeria.

At the event, which had in attendance eminent media personalities who included the group managing director (GMD) of LEADERSHIP Newspaper Group, Elazeh Muazu, the chairman of the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), who is also the chairman of Media Trust Ltd, Mallam Kabir Yusuf among others, Osoba said a substantial number of the online bloggers had become “a terrible pain” on the neck of the professional media practitioners and must be weeded out.

“I have always preached that the only way out is for all of us to also bombard the online and I mean all of us that are credible, trained, responsible journalists. Majority of these online bloggers are not trained, they are not part of us at all and the kind of stories they roll out are very disturbing and a terrible threat to our profession”.

He also charged media owners and publishers to ensure that they maximise the potentialities provided by the online news platforms by being proactive and always providing credible news.

In his Save Our Souls (SOS) message, NPAN chairman, Mallam Kabir Yusuf, urged media leaders to return to the practice of including entertainment materials in their editorial contents, even while leveraging well on other aspects of informing and educating their targeted audience.

Yusuf, who spoke at the event, where a book: “Writing For Media and Monetising It” authored by the editor-in-chief of LEADERSHIP Newspaper Group, Azu Ishiekwene, was on display for the public, said the media should be able to earn sustaining profits if it leverages on the three areas that included entertainment.