It is amazing how the issue of banditry has made some of us in the media look incompetent or prejudiced. The Oriire mishap coincided with the commando-style killing of ISWAP leader Abu Bilal Al Manuki and about 200 cohorts. The media screamed and yapped over Oriire and cast doubtful eyes on operation. When Oriire rescue happened, we were more interested in asking if it was staged. And then they asked questions about Woro, and others up north. Some said it was ethnic, as though we had not seen bigger rescues in the north. The latest then was Ngoshe with over 300 persons released.
Arewa Consultative Forum’s press release about those in the north that needed rescue enjoyed media highlights as though it did not make sense to celebrate the rescued fellow citizens. So, the greatest rescue took place last week, and it involved the vexed Woro persons and others in the north, amounting to 308 living, breathing humans.
The next day, only two major newspapers – The Nation included – made it the lead. For most, the EFCC and Osun fracas made more sense than the tale of fellow citizens who were grasping for life in the forest. Most major morning programmes also played it as routine news. They might have blacked it out. The newspapers plugged it reluctantly on page one, with tame reporting.
As this essayist has noted in the past, we in the media should think of what this era of journalism will bequeath. No one has even questioned the ACF that has not, up till the time of writing, written a note of joy for the release of the hapless citizens.
It seems the mantra, “when it bleeds, it leads” is the real purpose of this professional amnesia. It seems it is the media that is bleeding. Who will lead with it?
